Advice? Giveaways for old keys some of which may have been used.

I saw your title and I come to tell you the same that your message says :D
I don't remember the user but I do remember than in every of the GAs there was a little text reminding the fact that they weren't sure about the validness of the keys and that by entering you agreed on the possibility of them being used.

When you delete a giveaway you lose that slot, just so you know.

I believe this is entirely doable. Just remember to put those guidelines in your whitelist giveaways and have your winners write a comment on steamgifts consenting to having the giveaway deleted.

I would be interested in helping you with this if you still need users.

It is possible and according to rules in my opinion, however it is frowned upon by some people and might get you on a few blacklists.
If you have multiple copies of some of the games you could make 1 copy GAs for those and then use the 2nd key as backup if the other one turns out dupe.

Also if you're talking about sandwiches you can use the cheese as a barrier for the salad (pickles...) to keep the bread from getting moist so ham on top unless you're gonna toast it :P

Sounds like a good idea to me, as long as everyone abides by the rule that if the key is bad,in stead of marking received, agree to delete the ga.

Edited because Im not so smart today

I remember there actually being a case like this on forums. Someone required users to write in forum topic "I agree that GA will be deleted in case key turns out to be duplicate" and while some people were not sure if it would work, some Support came and said that indeed these would be a valid agreement and would be enough for GA creator to request GA deletion ;)

So you can do the same - ask ppl to write they agree to this before WLing them or adding to steam group and you are free to go ;)

Cheese and ham please, thanks :)
yum!
:P°

No ham, but add jalapeno and onion instead. :X

I wouldn't care and would allow a deletion (have done it in the past), but I wouldn't count on everyone doing it. A white-list lessens the chances of someone tossing a wrench into things, but nothing is sure-fire.

sounds interesting, count me in.

Personally, I think this is what the orphan key drop threads are for (or like discussions in Steam Groups).

By creating a GA for something that may not be legitimate you expose the winner to a non-activated win strike if support does not delete the GA before the seven day point. That strike would remain in place at least until support deleted the giveaway. If support did not approve the deletion then that strike would be permanent. Admittedly, I believe they would... but there is also nothing in the rules that obligates them to delete a gib even though you expressed that limitation.

Since support is already greatly overburdened, the potential for the GA to go without being deleted beyond the seven day point could be high. I think that is putting the entrants at too great a risk.

I've already had a similar situation (the key was for a different game than the GA). The GA creator could not send me a valid key so I agreed to delete the giveaway. The only thing you should be wary of - if there are a lot of invalid keys, you might run out of GA slots after deletions.

Seems others got to it before me but yes, it has been done before and I believe support was alright with that being a valid reason to delete the GAs.

Look like good thing to me.