First, your points do not expire as long as you have regular activity so you can continue building up your points and cash them in whenever you like for credits/gift card/cash back. Thus, the points rollover to the following year.

For Grazie Gifts, held annually in November, the points for this program are only those that are earned during the current year (no rollover). I've only been to one Grazie Gift promo (under the old program which I'll get to in a moment) and got a large broiler oven for around 60k points. I only had roughly 80k in points at the time.

The old Grazie Club point program, you earned 1 point for every $20 coin in (assuming slot play and regular member level status). The new program earns you 20 points so I expect the redemption rate to go up as well. I saw many items available for redemption such as bikes, plasma tvs, furniture, designer items, etc. Many had high redemption points such as around 600k for plasma tvs (plasma was the hot item at the time).

For myself, I usually just hold on to the points and do the cash back or gift card.