In WA you have to buy that gets the card under $5. In CA, there are no stipulations other than the GC is below $10.

I used to comb GiftCardWiki for cards under $10 and cash them out but recently stopped because it was too much trouble and not enough reward.

Technically this is the law, however, many merchants follow it only reluctantly or not at all.

-Some stores only let you do one per day, which is hardly scalable.
-You could end up with "Store credit" that's not cashable at a store that you have no interest in spending money at.
-I took a bunch of cards to GAP on day to cash them out and was allowed to do so, however, the clerk who did it for me had to enter my name, address, DL #, phone, email, and probably some other info too into the system once per card, to the point that she could say it by heart after I was done cashing out the 13 cards, which made me a tiny bit uncomfortable.
-I waited 45 minutes at one Whole Foods while they tried to figure out how to do it.
-Steak 'n Shake would not do it, in fact, when I asked to speak with the manger about why they weren't in compliance with CA law, the manager promptly went home so she was unavailable to speak to me (I wasn't told this directly but it was extremely obvious by the way the people in the store were conducting themselves). A letter to the CA attorney general has been thusfar unanswered.
-A manager at Target told me that she understood that what I was doing was legit (buying $5 GCs and cashing them out) but she couldn't continue to allow it because there were tons of people coming in with stolen CCs buying lots of $5 GCs and cashing them out.