Trade #12

YOU: Woah, woah, wait...  This trading adventure thing is still going on?  I thought you died or something!
ME: Yup.  I'm alive, and so is my paperclip trading adventure.
YOU: Hasn't it been like 2 years since you last made a trade?
ME: Two and a half, actually, and thank you for rubbing it in.  What's your point?
YOU: Isn't that... cheating?  Or something?  I'm confused.
ME:  You and me both.  Allow me to explain...


When I traded my Ibanez electric guitar to Ed for his awesome MAME Arcade Emulator, we both got a good deal.  That's how this trading thing works.  If that weren't true, people wouldn't trade. To reiterate the basic concept: One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure.

When I took my new arcade home & plugged it in, it was cool.  I played Pac Man.  I played Q-Bert.  I played Donkey Kong and Pitfall and some kind of Japanese Street Fighter whose menu I couldn't read.  I also played some actual Street Fighter.  My arcade emulator was awesome, and I couldn't wait to see what I could trade it for.  My estimates said with a few tune-ups/ modifications, it was worth at least $500 and probably more like $750.  I felt certain I could make the leap to wheeled vehicles.

And then, trader's tragedy...


There I was, minding my own business with my wife's new bakery just about ready to open and my arcade blinking and blooping as designed.


emulating is fun!

As I recall, I had just finished a great bout of Arkanoid when duty called. Work on the bakery needed to be done. And I was happy to do it. See that pink & brown wall in the background behind my arcade? It needed to be changed. Pink and BLACK was a much better color scheme. So I started taping and painting. But when I got to that very location behind the arcade, there wasn't room.  So I moved it. 
And the keyboard was sitting on a shelf.
And I wasn't paying attention. 
And I jerked the keyboard off the shelf, effectively demolishing the Emulator Control Board.




Oooo!!!  Magic Wires!!!

YOU: What's an Emulator Control Board?
ME: This is an Emulator Control Board.  And you need one to play a MAME Arcade.  Simply put, it reconfigures all the joystick wiggles & button slaps into keyboard keystrokes, which is what the computer actually understands. 
YOU: I don't get it.
ME: It's a translator.
YOU: Why didn't you just say that?
ME: Shut up.  I'm telling the story here. 


So in one fell swoop, I broke my machine. 
Tragic.
The games could still be played, mind you, but only through using the arrow/space/q/w/o/p/enter buttons, and what's the point in that? 
So, sadly, I had to put my trading on hold until I could figure out how to fix the thing.  I did my research, found out that Emulator Control Boards sell for around $40 or $50 and take some know-how and a handful of hours to install.  I had the 50 bucks, but not the know-how and CERTAINLY not the time.

See, my wife had this cool bakery (with a pink and black color scheme) that was about to open. This is a very nice pic of me and my very nice smile inside my wife's very nice bakery. It was a great accomplishment, and as you might imagine, a very demanding schedule for both of us. Meanwhile, the arcade got put into storage until I had the "chance to fix it".

Please fast forward one year.

Running a bakery is hard work.  REALLY hard work.  The hours are crazy.  The customers are crazy.  The weight gain is crazy!  But it was the fulfillment of a dream, and it made it all worthwhile. Among the awesome Cream Puffs, Cupcakes, Cookies, Brownies, Baklava, and other goodies she made on a daily basis, she also managed to make all of THESE amazing cakes. 




Suitcase Cake

Beer Bucket Cake

Turkey Cake




Two Peas in a Pod Cake

Sushi Cake



Guitar Cake

Yes, those really are all cakes.
Yes, I helped with some of my new-found guitar knowledge on that last one.  Chief detail: It has 24 frets, all of them getting progressively further apart as you appreach the handle.  I learned that thanks to Trade #9 (see below).
So as you might imagine, things were going pretty well.

Sadly, I hadn't managed to turn a paperclip into a delivery van, and using my Honda Civic was getting old.  Actually, it's the Honda that's geting old.  Currently 207,000 miles and counting.  (Somebody needs a new car).  Even worse, we had learned that the clientelle were the *wrong* clientelle for her gourmet goodies (aka: "If I buy 6 cupcakes, can I get a discount?", aka: "Do you sell beer?"/ "No, this was a beer distributer once, but we're a bakery now."/ "Oh... well do you at least sell wine?",  aka: "Look honey, they have peppermint cupcakes."/ "I dunno... I like mint, but I don't like pepper.", aka: CRAZY!).  Also pretty bad, I was rounding out year ten of an hour-and-a-half commute to work.  (See above note about horrendously high mileage on aforementioned Honda Civic).

And, yes, those really were real examples of things her customers have said.
In public.
Without buying anything afterwards.

ANYWAY!  So, after a year of running a successful (but exhausting) bakery, my wife & I came to the conclusion that something had to change.

Please fast forward one year.




Isn't it pretty?!

Hi.  We live in New Jersey now, and my commute is less than 15 minutes!
     WIN!
Also, my wife's *new* bakery just opened last week!
     DOUBLE WIN!!
And best of all, the clientelle is infinitely more matched to the style and awesomeness of her confectionary creations.
     TRIPLE WIN!!!




But sadly, my arcade emulator has sat for another entire year in storage and was getting older and dustier, and mouse-ier, and unused-ier all the time.

So today.... I sold it.

YOU: Gasp!  But that's not a *trade*.  That's a *sale*.  That IS cheating!!
ME: I totally agree.  What's your point?  Also, shut up.  I'm the one doing the trading here. 
YOU: So you're giving up on your dream of following in Kyle MacDonald's foosteps by starting with a blue paperclip and making a series of Bigger & Better trades until you get your wife a delivery van!?!?
ME: No. 
YOU:  But you SOLD it!
ME:  Yep.  And now I have money.  Just like I did between trades 10 & 11.  So now I can buy some cool item at a good deal & work on trading it into a slightly cooler item.  If I find the right person to trade with.
YOU:  Oh... right.  How much did you get for it. 
ME:  Allow me to finish my story.
YOU:  Sorry. 
ME:  It's ok.


So anyway.....

Phil and his new beat up MAME arcade.

Meet Phil. 
Phill lives in Middletown, NJ.  That's pretty much the heart of where Hurricane Sandy landed a couple of months back. 
Phil has a wife too. 
But Phil also has a garage, which is good because some wives don't like putting big boy toys like MAME Arcades in their living rooms. 
Ok.  Most wives.
Alright... All wives.
But more importantly, Phil has time. 
He bought my arcade from me for $250. 
He knows all about the broken control board & also how some mice got at some wires at some point while it sat in storage & messed up some other things. 
But that doesn't matter because Phil is a handy guy.  One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure, right?
He was looking for a fun project, and my arcade is just perfect!  He already has a better, simpler Emulator Control Board, and substituting in his own computer & monitor will get this arcade back & working at an even better standard than I ever had it.  I'm happy for Phil, and I'm happy for my arcade.  He got a great deal, and I get to know that my arcade found a happy home, which believe it or not is a really big part of this whole trading thing. 

Now those of you who have been paying attention may know that I've taken a loss here.  And it's true.  I traded a guitar that had cost me $310.  So it appears I've lost $60. 
But wait, there's more...
Three days before Phil emailed me from craigslist, I got another email from a guy named...
     ...wait for it...
Craig. 
I know, I know.  Crazy right?  Actually, I was wondering if that would ever happen.  I'm also wondering if I'll EVER have a student named Keith.  So far, ~1700 students and counting... with a "Keith" count of zero. 

Anyway, Craig *totally* wanted the arcade.  He even sent me $100 deposit through PayPal to ensure that I didn't sell it to someone else.  I was happy to oblige and took the arcade post off of craigslist, took the arcade post off of eBay, told my wife I had found a seller, responded to about 4 other trade and low-ball purchase offers, and went about my happy life until Craig and I could finialize a date to do the deal. 
Sadly, Craig then did some measuring and found out that the arcade simply wouldn't fit up his narrow staircase to the room he wanted to play MAME games.  So he offered me to keep half of his deposit as compensation for all my trouble.  I thought he was a heck of a nice guy for offering, and I refunded him $50 and reposted all my ads and started writing new emails and told my wife my arcade was still taking up space in our storage unit. 

So when Phil came along and bought the arcade for $250, that put me up to $300.  That means I'm only out $10.  Well, that and the 2.5 years it took me to admit I didn't have the time to fix the thing back to its glory days of $500+ value.

YOU: Cool story.  So what have you learned from all this?
ME: If you are trying to do a paperclippy-type trade adventure like I am, don't trade/buy for something that you don't have room to store.  My arcade sat untouched mostly b/c it wasn't anywhere near me for all that time.  Despite how the saying goes, size matters in paperclippy-type trades.
YOU: Interesting.  Anything else?
ME: Yes.  Take care of the stuff you buy/trade for.  Breaking them has a nasty way of slowing down your progress.
YOU: Lol. 
ME: You can't *say* "lol", you know.  That's just text speak for when people would actually chuckle in real life. 
YOU: No, I meant to say "lol".  I do it all the time.  I'm weird that way.
ME: I'm scared.
YOU: Shut up.  I'm the one reading all this junk, you know.
ME: Fair enough.
YOU: So... any other nuggets of knowledge?
ME:  I think so. I've learned many things in my paperclippy trading adventure thusfar.  People are really nice, for one thing.  It's lots of fun to meet them.  Another is that it never stops surprising me how something I don't really want is exactly the thing that someone else is dying to get their hands at.  But my new one is this... If you're patient enough & decent enough, I fully believe that life has a way of taking care of itself in the end.  My wife's new bakery is open in a better location with better customers and even has a partner this time so she can actually get some sleep.  My commute is way, way better than it has been in a decade which means I get to spend more time writing my stories (I'm also an aspiring author, btw).  And now that the bakery is open and we are getting rid of our storage unit, I don't have to pay a storage fee just to house an arcade I can't use.  See?  Everything pretty much took care of itself.  Eventually.
YOU: Sounds great.  Good for you.  But I'm getting tired, so last quesiton... So what's next, paperclip boy?
 ME: Well, I'm still in the market for a delivery van.  Anyone have something interesting to trade for $300?

Trade #11

one mean shredder

Meet Ed.

Ed's the kinda guy that plays a mean guitar.
Here he is looking pretty mean with his new Ibanez. Yeah, you can tell by that smile that he's up to something.  I'm on to you, Ed.  I'm on to you...

Actualy, Ed is one heck of a nice guy. Not only did he do a great job of keeping our emails up to date (something the average craigslist-er is lacking, I must say), but he also treated my brother and I to a little show of his talent.

Ed has several guitars and he's been playing since he was like five years old.  (He even still has the guitar he started on.  It's a cute little mock-electric job, and it's red... like Kyle MacDonald's paperclip.  I thought that was entirely irrelevant, but fun to share anyway).

http://www.oneredpaperclip.com/

Ed isn't in a band and has never really thought about joining one.  No, Ed's the kind of guy who just likes to jam.  And while up to now he's made do with his acoustic and his older, smaller Ibanez, he was definitely thrilled to get a good look at what is now the coolest shred-maker he's ever owned.  As he fingered the strings and layed out some riffs, I could tell Ed is also the kind of guy who really appreciated cool stuff.  Awesome.  Exactly the kind of person I was hoping to trade my guitar to.  And since my guitar has been sitting idle (ok... almost idle... I took it to 2 guitar stores & 1 pawn shop, but all those people did was tune it a little, strum it a little, and offer me a third what I'd paid for it... bleh) for over two months, and had been idle since December before that, I am proud to say I helped a cool guitar find a happy home.  Ed, I think I can hear you right now wailing away even as I write this.  Rock on, dude.  Everyone else, here's something Ed taught me: yet another thing I didn't know about guitars... they don't all have the same # of frets & therefore the same # of available notes.  Weird I never noticed that.  Ed's new guitar has 24 frets, that's 2 full octives and 6 frets more than his older Ibanez and about 10 more than the acoustic.  No wonder Eddie Van Halen hit all those crazy notes... he probably had more to choose from! 


Ok.  Lame. 
Back to important blogstuff...

silly scientists... tricks are not trades

I mentioned earlier that my brother was on hand today.  And it's a good thing too, because what Ed traded me was too heavy to handle on my own and too big to haul away in my Honda Civic (new & improved with its working A/C & buffed-out deer dent... but that's another story).  So before I get into the new item, thanks have to go to my bro.  Where would I be without you?  Probably forking over way too much dough to rent a trailer.  And here's a little trading side note: because he took his orange Avalanche (rife with its own stories) on no less than 5 hours of driving to help me out, I felt obliged to cover his gas expenses.  And guess what? I happened to have $40 laying around for just such an occasion thanks to my most recent trade (the last of the 4 items from Trade #9).  I remember when I got the $40 that I'd just tack it onto the deal for my next trade if need be... but a $450 guitar and $40 cash is kind of an odd thing to offer someone, so I decided to keep it for a rainy trading day.  Today was that day (yes, it did rain a little on the way there).  I like it when things work out. This cartoon is what happens when they don't.

emulating is fun!

So here it is, my new trade item. It's an Arcade Game Emulator.  What that means is that it's not any real arcade game like from the '70s & '80s... it's an emulation of lots of them.  Loads of them.  Bucketsfull of them.  Ok, to be more precise, this arcade has over 3,200 games on it.  What kind of games?  Well, Donkey Kong, for one.  Pac Man, for another.  I also came across Punch Out, Q-Bert, Pole Position, Dig-Dug, Tetris, Space Invaders, Spy Hunter, Street Fighter, Pitfall, Arkanoid, Breakout, Burger Time, & Centipede, to name (quite literally) just a few.  What is an emulation of an arcade game?  I'm glad you asked.  Simply put, it's some geek's home-made version of the game played on his home computer.  But when you consider that geeks from the '70s & 80's made all of those games from computers that were ridiculously inferior by today's standards, you can understand these things can be quite good.  While not all the 3,000+ games on this arcade actually work, and while there are like 7 versions of Pac Man, and while some of the ones that DO work have weird glitches in them (all very typical "downsides" of using massive emulators), there's no doubt that many play exactly like the real thing.  Graphics, board levels, music, speed, sound effects, rules-of-game, high scores... you name it, these emulators have it.  And the ones that have the best chance of being authentic are the ones people most liked to play back in the day... like those listed above.  And yes, emulators are totaly legal, though I can't hook this baby up to a working quarter slot... that would be very very illegal. 

I've already told you that Ed is a guitar guy and also a nice guy.  But what I've been keeping secret is that Ed is also an emulator guy.  No, he didn't write the emulator programs, but he did download the M.A.M.E.emulators (the most trusted & honored name in game emulators... it stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) into his Dell computer, mount it in this old arcade cabinet he picked up from Craigslist for fifty bucks, purchase then install then hooked up all the buttons & joysticks, and finally customize the whole getup to look about as real as the old machines as one could do from the comfort of one's own home.  Oh, did I mention Ed isn't yet a Junior in college?  Yeah, I think he'll be going on to bigger and cooler emulators in the future... but not until he plays his fingertips raw on his new Ibanez, of course. 

Ed took several months to build his arcade emulator, and I was happy to trade him for all that hard work.  I'm sure that many of you are now wondering what this thing is worth.  Truth is, I don't know.  They range a lot.  For example, on eBay right now you could pay up to $3,000 for a customized cabinet WITHOUT the emulated computer inside.  Value, I am learning, comes in all shapes and sizes.  It the case of an arcade emulator, it's time and effort that makes the grade, the biggest of which is hooking up and installing all the buttons in such a way as to communicate with the computer.  But there is $ as well.  The cabinet costs money, the buttons & joysticks cost money.  The lights, the wires, the improved sound card, the glass hovering over the screen... you get the idea.  Combined they are worth... well, whatever somebody is willing to trade in avoidance of doing all that work themselves.  One friend of mine, for example, stated that had he not already sold it, he would have traded his Ford F-150 for it (working, 150k miles, 1998).  Other people, however, pointed out that they could download the emulators for free & be perfectly happy playing sans-joystick right there on their desktop.  Hey, to each his own.  I get that.  I also get that while I don't really know how much $ my new Arcade Emulator is worth, I do know that I've drastically increased my audience.  After all, only musicians can play a guitar (and from what I've seen on Craigslist, most of them want acoustics), while ANYone can play a video game. I know that I'm already loving it. And both my brother and my sister-in-law have already stepped up to the panel & taken a few whacks at Pac Man & some Japanese-made fighting game that has no English anywhere on the screen.  (I joined the sis-in-law for the 2-player version.  We fought together against all the thugs in thug alley.  I died on the third screen.)  I guess all I need now is to find someone who really wants one of these things, just like Ed really wanted that Ibanez.
What's really interesting to me is that had my life gone a slightly different path, I'd probably already have one of these bad boys.  You see, not so long ago, before my wife decided to hang up her lab coat and don her baker's apron (you do remember why I'm doing all this trading, right?), we had a pretty cool basement with all the bells & whistles of fun.  Pool table. Ping pong table.  Poker table.  16-Seat projection movie theater.  Yeah, nice.  But it didn't have video games.  At one point I fished out my old Super Nintendo & connected it to a forgotten color TV & stuck it on a stand.  It was... ok.  But what I longed for was a REAL game.  An ARCADE game.  And long story short, I came across the emulator concept & even bought the plans for making one.  I never did get around to even so much as designing the cabinet let alone install the emulator software & start looking for joysticks, track balls, & buttons.  And part of me has always been a little disapointed.  So I'm pretty impressed at Ed.  He did all that and he hasn't even begun his 2nd half of college yet.  So while the Ibanez guitar was cool to look at, I couldn't do a thing with it.  Ditto for the 3/4-sized Carlo Robelli acoustic job I had a few months ago.  And while I definitely like baseball & guys who make it to the hall of fame, The Camden River Sharks & even Rollie Fingers & Tom Seaver weren't my particular cup of tea.  And while the XBox & Guitar Hero were more up my alley, the Arcade Emulator is without a doubt my personal favorite item to be (temporarily) in my possession.  Right now it's sitting in the corner of my wife's soon-to-be-open bakery (335 Grape Street, Allentown, PA).  And until I find an even better trade (perhaps I might even be able to jump straight to a used Cargo Van!!), I can now take a break from installing insulation or painting walls or designing signs or calling various contractors and go play a game of Pac Man just the way Namco intended: on a full-sized standup cabinet with inch-high ghosts & resonating sound.

On second thought, maybe I should keep it unplugged. I have a tendancy to get a little... obsessed... with things sometimes. 

No, really?
;)

actual screen shots :D

Trade #9-d

Remember this guy?  He's the student who was the other half of my very first trade.  In fact, he proudly tells (and shows) anyone who asks that he still has my blue paperclip! 

With his history, I think from now on I'll call him Trader Bob. 

The other day Trader Bob bought my final item from my Xbox trade. 
I'll be adding the cash to the guitar as a negotiating factor, and if I don't end up needing it on this trade, it shall carry over to the next one.

So how much did I get?  Well, Trader Bob really took me for a ride on this one.  He spent a mere $40 on what sold for $200 about a year and a half ago and is just under $100 now that a newer version is out.  I hate to give it up for so little, but I do kind of owe T-Bob for helping me get started. Besides, I was really having trouble on Craigslist getting interest.  In fact, in the 2 months I had it posted, I received exactly 2 emails about it, and both of those people mysteriously cut off our correspondance. 

ONLINE TRADING NOTE:
The above is what craigslist regulars call "spamming". You see, craigslist has a small identity protection feature which masks your email to any would-be viewers of your post.  This keeps advertisers from using simple programs to steal hoards of emails and selling them to all those annoying ads we all get from time to time.  But spammers circumvent this protection by sending out fishing lines.  They feign interest so that you respond... thus giving away your full address.  The most common tactic is a very simple email asking 'is this _____ still available?'  Sometimes the _____ has the name of your item.  Sometimes it's simply not there.  I've learned the best thing to do is to not even respond to these people.  Real buyers/traders will write real emails with real questions and offers.

BACK TO THIS TRADE:
Trader-Bob was obviously very happy with his purchase, and he started using it that night.  I was very happy too... and not just for T-Bob.  Finally, I'd understand what the heck the thing actually DID.  I asked him, and his response was classic. First there was a pause and a stare, the kind that says, 'Oh, man this is so cool,' then he started talking.  I didn't understand a word of his explanation, of course.  It had something to do with recording songs and parts of songs and merging those parts and making new songs and all the while using various blips and blaps and bloops... or something.  I dunno.  But T-Bob was really excited about it, and that's ok by me. 

Now I wonder... can he sell his musical concoctions? 

Trade #10

So here is Matt.  Matt needed cash for his upcoming nuptuals (yes, he's getting married this summer... congrats!) and he was selling some things to help with the costs.  I found him and his item on craigslist and if you could see under that yellow smiley face (Matt preferred to keep his face off the internet & that's cool with me), you'd know his real smile is just as broad because he was quite happy to take my $310.  His fiancee was happy too, and I'm glad my paperclip could help them begin their young lives together.  I hope they have an awesome marriage, truly.  May it last 310 years.

How I came by Matt's item wasn't as easy as I had thought.  Since my last trade I've been wracking my brain to decide what to buy with the cash I had collected. Following my own instinct and the advice of my followers I did indeed look at tools, computers, dirtbikes & 4-wheelers, and I even went to a pawn shop to see what was available.  All had their pros and their cons (the pawn shop was mostly con... it's not like that show on TV here in Allentown... sheesh! what a bunch of junk!), and I eventually had to step back and look at the big picture again and reevaluate my methods to achieving my goal.   What all this consideration eventually taught me was that I needed to buy something that would have a high demand. 

See, my last trade of an object for an object was with an X-Box system.  Now there was no doubt I got a good trade for it, but along the way I was thwarted by an unexpected hurdle: the demand for X-Boxes may have been high, but the supply was even higher.  Ah, memories from high school strike again... this time from Economics class and the rules of supply and demand.  Because the supply of X-Boxes was so high, people just didn't tend to make me good offers.  Getting a good deal took a lot longer than it could have and a lot more work on my part in the form of hunting through page after page day after day and sending and replying to email after email.  I'll do it all again of course because, well, I love my wife and she's worth it and she really needs that delivery van.  But all things being equal, I now realize I can save myself a bunch of work and stress by making sure to get an item that is in high demand but has relatively low supply.

So I went for an electric guitar.

My theory?  They retain or even increase their value over time, as a piece of electronic equipment they are automatically suspect to inherently higher value by the modern-day masses, and they're small enough to fit in my living room and be transported without having to rent or borrow a truck (hmmm... if only I had a truck-like vehicle I could use to haul bigger items around in).

And besides all that, they're wicked cool.

More importantly, there were a lot of electric guitars for sale on craigslist but pretty much none at all offered up for trade.  That means I could have a monopoly on trading one.  Anybody who wants one but doesn't have the cash will be pleasantly surprised to see one up for trade.  But probably just that one.  ;)  

So I researched electric guitars and found out a few things...
First, the Fender Stratocaster is the gold standard for American electric guitars.  Fender has also produced the Telecaster and the Squire, models that are lesser in value (though the reviews I read say the Telecaster is almost as good an instrument). The Strat I'd heard of, and if you can manage to find one from the '70s in good condition you can expect to pay several thousand for it. I had just $310, of course, and while I did find several for sale in that conceivable range, they were all used pretty hard or were recent remakes from Mexico which are still darned good but apparently don't have quite the same vintage "soul" to them.  This is something I came to appreciate even more once I talked to Matt... more on that later.

Secondly I found that the only real competitor to the Strat is just about anything made by Ibanez.  Ibanez makes guitars that look more like the ones you think of on MTV videos, is a newer company, and had rave reviews just about everywhere I looked.  Plus, they sell for a little cheaper so I'd probably find a used one that I could afford which would be in better condition.

Matt's guitar was an Ibanez RG370DXGP1.  It is also in 99% mint condition.  He bought it last December (so, just 5 months ago) and literally used it only once.  Coincidentally (or perhaps its not a coincidence at all but just further proof that these are the 2 quitars that really matter), Matt had been using a Strat in his band up until then and bought the Ibanez only to get a different sound.  Sadly, after just one gig the band broke up.  In Matt's own words, isn't that just how things go?

That I got a great guitar in great condition at a great price I knew going into the deal.  What I didn't know is some other stuff Matt explained, and I thank him for clarifying some things for me.  One is that it's pronounced "EYE-bun-ez", not "ee-BAHN-yez" like I had ignorantly assumed.  Another and more important is that the Ibanez has more of a grungey/metaly sound like what Metallica or Joe Satriani plays while the Fender Strat is more entuned to the melodic heart-wrenching moody Blues.  Now, I love the blues, but real grinder guitar bands have always been more my style.  Makes me wish I knew how to play.

But I can't, so I have to trade. 

What's even cooler than all that is I got more than just the guitar from Matt.  His sale also came with a gig bag, 2 guitar stands, 2 shoulder straps, an amp wire, and a whole collection of original paperwork that helps authenticate its right-off-the-rack condition.  These papers include an instruction manual, a limited warranty which I believe is still valid, an inspection card stamped by 4 separate Ibanez examiners, and a model # ticket.


Overall, I think this is the coolest trade yet.  I'm happy being out of the cash and small items business.  It was quite exhausting and carrying around all that money for so long was really beginning to bug me. I guess what was really hard was holding out for more sales so I could make a bigger purchase.  I still have the 4th item on the list, actually, but there are absolutely zero legit bites for all 3 times I posted it (at ever-decreasing prices), so I moved on and will continue to post the Sony Acid Pro 6 in the hopes of making a little extra cash to put towards the next trade, albeit I'm doing so at a restrained level.


FINAL THOUGHTS & LINKS TO IMPORTANT STUFF:
     -careful... your browser might lose this page-
>To see or forward my craigslist post to your friends who want a wicked cool guitar, click here. (This will be on craigslist for ~1 month or until I make a trade & delete it).
>To hear what an Ibanez RG370DXGP1 sounds like, click here, or here, or even here. And then... this one is from a different Ibanez, but it's pretty close to what mine could sound like... if you had mad skills.
>To see why my wife desperately needs a delivery van, click here.
>And finally, to start your own unique trading adventure, click here.

Thanks for reading.  Tell your friends to join my mailing list. 
-Keith

Trade #9-c

Here is Chris, a guy who knows a good deal when he sees it.  Chris's friend is getting married (yay!) and Chris is in charge of the "pre-ceremonial festivities honoring the bachelor who is to be soon married".  A shorter name for this concept is the "Bachelor Party".  As some of you may already know, these "Bachelor Parties" sometimes involve activities of a questionable nature, but Chris is a pretty respectible guy.  He just wants to shoot his friends in the face with paint.

I didn't get the name of Chris's soon-to-be-married friend, so I'll just call him Bachelor Bob.  Bachelor Bob doesn't know it yet (gee... I hope he doesn't read this blog before the day of the festivities!), but Chris has planned a full day of paintball fun for B-Bob and friends.  Ah... 7 hours of shooting your friends and listening to them wail in pain and laugh like little school girls... what a fantastic idea!  Unfortunately for Chris, one detail of his plan has backfired.  That's where I came in.

Chris learned that this particular paint-splattering venue offered a free paintball set to large parties.  Chris naturally planned to collect lots of guys, meet the 'x' number of people requirement, and give the paintball set to Bachelor Bob as a present.  Problem... Chris's crew of paint splatterers fell a little short on the head count. 

So feeling thusly compelled to still provide said paintball set to said bachelor, Chris started looking around on Craigslist.  He saw my ad, emailed me, and within hours we met up and traded... my paintball set for his stack of cash.  I made $100 on this deal.  It was a truly great price for Chris (this set is really worth around $200, especially since it's only been used once), and while I would have liked a bit more for it, it's still worth way more than a blue paperclip, so I'm happy too.

So now I have $310 in cash, and I'm ready to buy something cool with it. 

Those of you who have been following along might be saying, "Wait a minute there, Keith!  What about the 4th item you traded the Xbox for?  The Sony Acid Pro program!?  Isn't that worth a whole bunch of money?!  Shouldn't you hold out for that and buy an even bigger item of coolness?!" 

I'd like to agree with you, but the truth is that I'm just not getting the interest I had thought I would about this particular item.  *insert sad face*  Oh well.  3 out of 4 is still pretty good.  And $310 is more than the Xbox was worth... I nearly doubled my net value on this trade, though it did take a while.  

Just in case, I dropped the price on the Acid Pro anyway and re-posted on Craigslist one more time, but at this point I feel I've got enough cash to do some serious purchasing.  Besides, if I do sell it, I can just as easily add that cash to my next trade.  *insert smiley face*

So, what I'm looking for now... is advice.  Seriously.  So, answer me this:

HELP!  WHAT THE HECK DO I PURCHSE WITH MY $310???

Right now I'm thinking tools.  I've seen lots of tools for sale on Craigslist, & I'm theorizing that people who want tools work in their garage a lot... so mabey I can get some kind of wheeled vehicle as a next trade. Other than that... I have only one plan: try to get something really awesome for $310. 

So help me out, people.  Send me your ideas.  Looking for good common sense as well as out-of-the-box/I-never-would-have-thought-of-that ideas too.  I'd prefer comments here on the blog so you can fight amongst yourselves and I can watch the mayhem, but if you want to stay demure I'd be just as happy with a straight-up email.  Thanks in advance for your help. 

but wait... there's more!...

An Interesting Side Note on Trade 9-c:  A Brief Story of Shocking Proportions

After Chris and I made our deal, he was about to shake hands and leave when I asked him a question: "Have you ever heard of 'One Red Paperclip?' I said.  (TRADING TIP: This is how I've learned to get people to let me take pictures of them.  If you just suddenly ask to take a photo, they get kinda creeped out.  Prompt them with Kyle MacDonald's story first.  Then they're intrigued and its ok to ask if they'll pose for you.)

Chris's response was nothing like I expected.  He didn't say "Yes" (nobody's said that yet), didn't say "No" (everybody has said that so far), and didn't even say "Ok, buddy.  Have a nice day," and then walk away briskly (which is what I'm always expecting on a deeper level).  Nope, what Chris said was "Did you buy a filing cabinet the other day?"

Woah.  What an odd question.  But it's odder still because he happened to be right.  I had bought a filing cabinet just a few days prior.  My wife will be needing one for her bakery and I found a really big one for sale on Craigslist.  So I bought it.  (No paperclips or other trades involved... I just bought it with my regular day-job money.) 

So there I stood, stunned, trying to figure out how this complete stranger would guess such a thing.  Chris saw the perplexed look on my face, smirked at me, then explained that he saw me driving past him the other day with it tied to my roof and he recognized my car.  We laughed, commented on how it was a small world and all that. 

But then it hit me... something else is odd here. 

Why didn't he ask me that when I first drove up?, I thought.  Why now when I mention the paperclip trade? Still looking as confused as a dog chasing a flashlight beam (if you've never tried that... you MUST... hours of fun, trust me!), Chris then told me that Seth, the guy I bought the filing cabinet from, is a friend of his.  It seems he was on his way over to Seth's when we crossed paths.  Later, when he & Seth got to talking about the crazy guy who balanced the giant filing cabinet on the top of his Civic, Seth just happened to mention the paperclip trade to Chris.  I, of course, had already told Seth all about it & given him my wife's card and this blog address. 

It really is a small world, huh?  A really, really small world.

Just thought I'd share.

Ok, done for now.  Hopefully the next post won't take a whole month.  Another Trading Tip: Selling stuff takes a long time, especially when it's out of season (first posted the paintball set in January... it's April now.  Yek). 

Be sure to comment/email your $310 suggestions, and also be sure to check out my wife's cakes.  The most recent one was over 4 feet high.  Yikes!  The delivery was not easy... boy do we need that van! 
(Huh?  Van?  ... for an explanation, scroll up & re-read the blog header.  It's updated.) 

L8R all.  (I can't believe I just wrote that).

Trade #9-b

This... is Bob.  No, really.  This guy's name actually is Bob.  Yeah, thought you'd like that.  Bob is married to Emma, and together they have a daughter, Lauren.  Lauren is in high school and has a new Wii system with all sorts of gaming possibilities.  Bob & Emma have been wanting to get Lauren a gaming chair to celebrate her general awesomeness, but they had a problem: gaming chairs aren't in season. Confused?  Don't worry, so was I when Emma told me that.  But apparently, they just aren't in stores right now.  Now I, for one, would have thought the long cold winter would be the perfect time to sell things that give people reason to sit inside for hours on end, but it seems that New Jersey store proprieters disagree.  Good thing there's Craigslist.  That's where Emma saw my ad.

Before Emma emailed me, I had recieved three offers to steal purchase the gaming chair from me already, but for some reason I felt these weren't the right prices people.  So, I waited.  And then Emma emailed wondering if the chair was still available.  She said she'd give me my asking price.  Sweet.  And sweet for Emma & Bob too.  They got this chair at about half the store price plus they didn't have to wait until spring.  (Or is summer gaming chair season?) As you can see in this pic, Lauren's as happy as a kid who's recently acquired a gaming chair to better enjoy her Wii system.  Yep.  That's exactly how happy she is. 

Now Bob's a cool guy.  His house is filled with music equipment and memorobilia.  It's all good stuff too like racks of guitars, a well-used drum set, and a life-sized poster of the King of Pop.  And records.  Lots and lots of classic vinyl.  Emma's equally cool for letting her husband surround the family with stuff like that plus she knows where to get St. Patty's Day Frog Cupcakes (sold only one day a year), which is right up my wife's alley.  Lauren, of course, is in high school and is cool by default.  So all in all, this is a family of cool, and when I told them about Kyle MacDonald & his paperclip trades, they smiled and shook their heads in happy disbelief like so many of the rest of us did, plus they started looking around the house for unwanted paperclips.  That's cool too.

I didn't get an afternoon with Alice Cooper for the gaming chair like Kyle had at one point (Bob raised his eyebrows at that little trade, as you might imagine), but I did get a hundred bucks.  Couple that with the $110 from the ipod, and I'm officially better off than I was with the xbox, and I still have a paintball gun and a serious audio editing program to go.  If you're interested in either, let me know.  If you're just interested in what happens, shoot me an email and I'll be sure to shoot one back the next time I make a trade and update this blog.  Until next time, thanks for reading, and please take a moment to check out my wife's cakes on my "links" section of the sidebar. 

Trade #9-a

Say hello to Cathy.  No, on second thought, don't bother.  She can't hear you, and not just because she's not really on your computer... it's because she's too busy enjoying her new ipod.

Cathy has been wanting an ipod for years, and when she saw my ad on craisglist, she emailed me right away.  I had been asking for trades or cash, as you remember, and Cathy offered cash.  Eventually we agreed to a price of $110, plus she'd come to my location to pick it up.  That was a nice deal since for the first time I didn't have to waste time and gas for this 'trade'.

One of the obstacles I'm now dealing with is having my trades split into 4 units.  If all goes swimmingly, I'll sell the other 3 items for cash soon and take the whole wad & buy something nice.  If all I can do is tread water, it'll take a long time to sell them or I won't get much for them or I'll only be able to make trades for like-valued items.  And if I drown completely, I'll make no trades and no sales and I'll be stuck with $110 and 3 items I don't really want for myself (although the gaming chair is pretty cool and I can think of several people I'd enjoy pelting with my paintball gun).

Good news is I've already had several inquires on all 3 of the other items, including an offer of cash for the gaming chair.  Bad news is that that particular offer was too low for my liking and the other two inquiries have not panned out yet. 

In the meantime, I have $110 burning a small hole in my pocket.  Could think of a bill or two I'd love to pay with it, but that's something I refuse to do... no, any cash I make off a paperclip-traded item must be put back into the purchase of another item which will bring me one step closer to my wife's new bakery.

More later.  In the meantime... you know the drill... check out her cakes and add a comment if you like.

Trade #8

This is Ron.  Ron's a happy guy with his cardboard box full of XBox stuff.  You would be too if a friend gave you a stack of games and then you got the system & all those accessories for stuff laying around your house that you don't use anymore.  That's what Ron did.  I'm happy for him, and I hope he enjoys the XBox and kicks his online friends' butts. 

So what stuff did Ron not use anymore?  It's a collection of 4 smaller items.  None are as good as the XBox, but collectively I think I'm still the winner.  (Of course, Ron probably thinks the same thing). 

Once I got the XBox, I had many offers through Craigslist, but I quickly saw how frustrating it was compared to the ease of trading with studetns I saw every day.  There were no less than 3 deals I thought I was about to make which fell through last minute.  Additionally, some people were very poor communicators.  They said they'd email me later that day but I wouldn't hear from them for 3 days.  Or they wouldn't answer a direct question I'd asked.  Or they'd ask questions I'd clearly put the answers to in my Craigslist post.  I'm going to quietly refrain from elaborating on the grammatical abilities of these people... and I'm not talking about what used to be called AOL-Speech... that text-driven shorthand (I'm actually ok with most of that, though I choose not to participate in it myself).  I'm talking about such blatant errors that I literally couldn't understand what the guy was talking about.  Again, no elaboration, I'm just saying it was a bit shocking. 

Nevertheless, I was generally happy with my first Craigslist experience.  Lots of people wanted my item, and while most were what is apparently called "Low-Ballers" (they offer something worth far less than what I was offering), I don't generally hold any animosity for even these people.  A simple "No thanks" in respsonse was all it took.  I also learned that I got much farther in making my own searches and offering my XBox than by posting and just waiting for a gold mine to drop into my lap.  Perhaps it's because of all those low-ballers out there. 

In any case, I had to think a little about this trade because splitting to multiple lesser items means it'll be a lot harder to do my next trade for a big-ticket item.  This is a bit of a risk, but I think it's still a good move.  That's because the other perspective is the one I'm going with: I now have 4 trades going at once, and any one of them can be their own venue for furthering my progress.  I could probably trade any 2 for another comparable XBox, for instance, which means I'm back where I was a few weeks ago, only with 2 more items in hand.  Additionally, having 4 trades going at once means a lot less drag time in between trades.  It was quite frustrating waiting around to trade the XBox and I'd much prefer to make multiple small trades simply based on the fact that I bore easily.  Probably the same reason that I'd prefer to drive an extra ten miles the long way around than to sit in slow-moving traffic.  That's the pits. 

Here's another consideration: selling my new items for cash.  I know many of you will complain that this is not exactly in the spirit of the paperclip trade concept, but hear me out.  First of all, what is cash?  It's a symbolic version of value.  Nothing more than paper and ink, we only believe it's valuable because the government tells us it is.  Trust me... if the big asteroid/ volcano/ nuclear war ever does hit, cash will instantly be valuless and plain old bread and clean water will be the most valuable thing around.  Secondly, if I do sell for cash, I'm making a promise here and now that I will not keep the cash and pay my bills.  The only thing I'll allow myself to do with it is buy some other item which I'd then put up for trade. 

Hmmm... I'm still hearing some grumblings from some of you out there.  I'm ok with that.  I was much like you at the beginning of this, but experience has changed me.  I was actually inches away from trading the XBox for one item I really wanted (a running dirt bike) but the guy ended up selling it to someone else.  Meanwhile, a different person offered me the exact same $ for the XBox.  If I'd been on top of things, I could have sold the XBox and purchased the dirt bike.  As it stands, I don't have it, and I'm realizing that pre-catastrophy cash is very valuable.  You can trade it for anything you want.

So... on to Ron's 4 items.  Right now all 4 items are all listed on Craigslist (Allentown) for either trade or sale.  Who knows what I'll get.  Ideally I want somebody to offer me that running dirt bike or something equally cool for all 4, but I might end up selling 2, trading the others, or even selling all 4 and then buying the bike.  Don't know.  I might also end up trading all 4 and having 4 continuous trades going, which means you'll be getting a lot more posts on this blog.  Only time will tell.

So, here's what Ron gave me.  Go on and post a comment.  Let me know how you think I did...
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 1) IPOD CLASSIC
-6th Generation (the best of the "classic" series)
-80 gig
-silver color
-estimated 30-hour battery life on audio play & 5-hour battery life on video play
-includes usb cord (also charges unit from your computer)
-includes wall outlet adapter for other charging option
-already downloaded onto it are 6,682 songs (most are hip-hop, R&B, rap, metal, & rock but with that many songs you must understand there is a huge mix of all kinds of other music too)
-already downloaded onto it are 5 movies: "Crank 2", ext. ver.: "Drillbit Taylor", "Funny People", "Half Baked", "Knowing"
-used storage is only 42 GB... still has 32.2 GB free (you can kinda see this in the bar graph on the pic)
-has the minor scratches you'd expect from a used device but screen is relatively unaffected and no scratches anywhere are bad/problematic
-device functions perfectly... other than scratches & all those files already downloaded onto it, you'd never know it's used at all
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 2) PAINTBALL GUN
-Tippman "98 Custom" model
-pristine condition... used only once!
-includes 9 oz. gas cylinder with some gas still in it!
-includes helmet
-includes box of orange paintballs... full it held 1,000 & this is a little more than half full, so I'd guess there are approximately 600 left


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 3) GAMING CHAIR

-Pyramat model PM420W

-for those who don't know... "gaming chair" = extremely comfortable floor chair w/ dual speakers beside head rest that hook up to whatever it is you are watching/ listening to. Ideal for playing video games, but is also cool for watching movies or just listening to your ipod, etc.

-this one is in pristine condition.... no rips, scratches, stains, or breaks in framework

-folds in half for smaller storage

-includes power cord

-includes standard headphone audio wire for your ipod or similar headphone-jack device
-includes yellow-red audio wires for any typical TV or gaming system
-includes wireless transmitter with up to 8 'channels' for use on up to 8 different devices

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 4) SONY ACID PRO 6

-for those who don't know, this is a professional-grade digital audio workstation software program

-version 7 of this same program is the newest version sells for $250

That's it, and that's all.  Feel free to comment.  And make sure you check out my wife's cakes. 

Trade #7

SNAFU averted! Well, it turns out it only took Microsoft 3 weeks to fix the XBox system I've been waiting to trade for. Moreover, I hooked it up, plugged it in, and the system works like a charm. Yay for good news. More details on it further down.

In the meantime, take a look at this happy kid. For reasons that I think are obvious at this point, I'll call him Wii-Bob. Wii-Bob is now the very proud owner of Guitar Hero World Tour Complete Band Game for his Wii. If you look closely, you'll see in his eyes that he's not just happy for himself either.

For me, it's not how Wii-Bob made this trade, but why. You see, Wii-Bob here wanted to give the Guitar Hero game to his little brother for his birthday. Nice. Granted, Wii-Bob has full intentions of playing the game too, but still, you gotta like his style. But it was an easy trade for him because he already got a bigger, better XBox for Christmas. This was his old/spare one.

...and the record goes round and round again.

As I mentioned before, I had lots of offers- serious offers- among my students immediately upon getting the Wii game. There were three gaming systems, several other games with accessories, one (small) HD TV, and five or ten paperclips. I went with the XBox based partially on recommendations from these same observant students. They explained that the XBox LIVE was the aspect that should seal the deal. I rather agree. And this coming from a guy who hasn't played a video game since Killer Instinct for the Super Nintendo cost seventy bucks. Ouch. Yeah, I actually wrote that based on experience.

So what, precisely did I get from Wii-Bob? Well, the XBox now in my living room has 2 wireless controllers, an extra battery & a charger for them, a headset, some HD wires (more than one kid did the famed jaw-drop at that one), a single game ("Arcade Live, Volume One"), and a free month of XBox LIVE. Not bad for 3 months and 7 trades from a blue paperclip, even if I do say so myself.

But that's not the end of Wii-Bob's story. I also mentioned before that there were four people involved in this trade and that this will be my last trade with students. The explanation is actually pretty simple. Just like the last trade, I required a note of permission from Wii-Bob's parents. I got one from his dad. Here it is (modified for privacy).  I know it's small, but if you click it you can read it just fine.  So anyway, I'm person #1, Wii-Bob is person #2, and Wii-Bob's dad is person #3. Person #4 is the principal of the school where I teach. As I also mentioned before, I began to feel a little weirded out about these trades when they started to become financially significant. So I went to my principal to fill him in on the details and we agreed my adventure had gone as far as it can with the student body. While it was a very educational experience for the kids, I have never had the intension of exploiting children, and both I and my principal feel that continuing to trade with current students beyond this point might stretch the innocence of a child. Thus, from here on out my trades will be limited to craigslist, this blog, word of mouth, and a smattering of pure dumb luck.

In the weeks when I waited to get the XBox, I've been scouring craigslist for trades. Nobody offered me any paperclips, but I did get some other legit offers. I haven't decided yet, and that's based mostly on the fact that I didn't have the full details of what I was offering. Now that I've got them, I'm reposting on cragslist and doing the waiting game once more.

If you're going to wait too, you might as well kill some time by checking out my wife's cakes from the link up top. She and they, after all, are the reason this whole hootinanny is going down. I did not just write that. You didn't see that.

Small SNAFU

Well, 2 weeks ago I made a deal to trade my Guitar Hero +accessories for an XBox 360 with 2 controllers. A nice deal, I thought. It's still in the realm of video games, but a system is better than a game. The stipulation was that the other guy had to give me a working XBox. He agreed and sent the thing to the manufacterer for repairs.

So why the SNAFU?

Well, I just got some bad-ish news.

A friend told me that he sent out his XBox for a similar repair and it took 3 months to get it back. A different friend also said the same thing happened to him but when he got his back in 3 months, it still wasn't working.

Grrr.

I generally try to be positive about things, so when I first made the deal I decided I could spend the time making a blog about this. (tada)

Then when I was caught up on the blog, I got to work looking for trades for the XBox. I've already found a few decent offers, and I'll admit that it was nice knowing I didn't have to commit to any of them until my XBox was actually in hand. But now it looks like I'll be waiting a while, and that's frustrating. Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't take 3 months. Maybe I'll get lucky and find an amazing trade while I wait.

But neither of those things are likely. So for now I'm just updating my trading SNAFU. Tip to would-be paperclip traders: don't agree to a trade unless the object is in hand and in the condition you want it.

Estimated months to date of XBox arrival: 3 (April 15th, tax day).
Projected trades I could have made in that time: Five to Ten.
Lesson Learned about the value of time wasted: Priceless.

Trade #6

Say hi to a very happy kid. Just for fun, I'm going to call him... Bob! Bob here is now the very proud owner of a 1966 Topps Pete Rose card & a 1992 Hall of Fame Fotoball signed by Rollie Fingers and Tom Seaver (latter came with a cert. of authenticity).

Now what I found most interesting about this trade is that Bob and I are both fans of baseball, but we had very different opinions about what item is the most valuable. For me, it was the Pete Rose card. You know... more hits than any player in the history of the game but hasn't been elected to the Hall of Fame because he gambled on baseball including games he both played in games he managed and then lied about it for something like 20 years. Yeah. THAT Pete Rose. I think and hope that one day "Charlie Hustle" will be admitted into the Hall (after all, never bet on his team to LOSE!... only to win... that was the Charlie Hustle way). But that's not what this post is about.

You see, my trading partner Bob found the Rose card interesting, but it was the Fotoball that he went nuts over. He asked out of curiosity whose autographs were on the ball. I told him Rollie Fingers and Tom Seaver.

"Tom Seaver!" he shouted. "I MUST have that ball."

As I mentioned in my last post... paydirt. I found a baseball fan who appreciated what I had. Better yet, he was truly fanatic about it.

When I asked him why he liked the Seaver ball so much he said simply that Tom Seaver was the greatest pitcher the Mets ever had. As a Yankees fan, I wouldn't know. But if someone came to me with a Don Larson ball, I guess I'd react pretty much the same way. Then Bob started listing all sorts of Seaver stats that were both over my head and circling my heart. Here was a kid who would truly appreciate a special item of baseball memorobilia. I immediately wanted him to have the ball (and the Rose card, too... what the heck), and he hadn't even made an offer yet.

We talked briefly about the possible trade options, and really within just a minute or two, we had a tentative deal. So what did he offer? Well, let's just say that of all my trades thusfar, I feel this one was the most fair. Bob gave me a video game for the Wii gaming system: "Guitar Hero World Tour Complete Band Game", to be exact. It came with the game, the wireless guitar, the wireless drum set, and a wired microphone. Bob never used it. It was still sealed in the box. He explained that he got it as a present just AFTER his Wii system had broken. Since that time, he'd loaded up on games for another system and his Wii and the 2 or 3 games he had for it were pretty much just sitting there doing nothing.

I mentioned above that I feel this was a very fair trade. Why? Well because financially speaking, it is impossible to say who won here. You see, the game with all its components are currently valued at around $150. The ball and card are harder to judge because a LOT rests on the condition of the card and I'm no expert. I did a little MORE research on baseball card values. Apparently the corners are the major focal point... they love to see sharp 90-degree angles, which are hard to come by. At my best guess I figure the ball had a value of around 35 bucks and the Rose card was worth at least 30 and might have been as high as 75.

"But wait!" you're saying. "I thought you said it was impossible to say who had the better financial deal." And right you are. As it stands (and assuming I didn't vastly underestimate the condition of the card), I'm clearly the winner. The thing is, time changes everything. As time goes on, my Wii game will only decrease in value while his ball and card will only increase. Already the Wii game has halved in value since when it first came out, which was only a little over a year ago. And when/if Pete Rose does get accepted into the Hall of Fame, that card will instantly spike in value.

Now, that's not the end of this story. I mentioned above that Bob and I made a tentative deal that day. That's because I had a stipulation. Even as he made his offer I got the uneasy feeling that this whole trading-for-something-bigger-and-better adventure was getting away from me. I mean, here I was less than 2 months and a mere 6 trades away from a silly little PAPERCLIP and I was being offered what is basically the hottest video game on the market. I was suddenly worried that I might be crossing some sort of line with my students. So I insisted that Bob provide a signed note from his parents allowing the trade. He assured me that would not be a problem, and indeed it appeared not to be. He had both the giant Wii game box and the note the next monday in school. And, yes, I did check to make sure it wasn't his handwriting. You can too if you click it so you can read the thing.  (It's modified to protect Seaver-Bob's true identity).

In the meantime, Bob is just giddy over his Seaver autograph, and that makes me smile. In fact, I call Bob "Seaver" now. I heard a rumor that he barked at some other kids in math class when they reached over to touch it. Can't confirm the story, but I like the idea of it. A true fan WOULD do that.

So I'm really very happy about this trade. Bob is happy and I'm happy for him. And in the meantime, I have something of better current value that I can trade right away.

Speaking of trading the Wii game... the offers came POURING in immediately. All sorts of video games & systems. But before you try to top what I've been offered, I already have a deal made. We are waiting on the item to make it official, but all parties have agreed (and in this case there are FOUR of us!). It is the last, I'm sorry to say, that I'll be making with my students.

What's the trade?
Why the ultimatum?
And how will I trade from now on?

As soon as I have it in hand, I'll post again. Farewell for now.
If you get bored waiting, please check out the link at the top of the page to see my wife's cakes. And if you like... buy one! They're yummy and fun to look at too.

Trade #5

Say Hello to Bobbi. She's not really named Bobbi, of course. In fact, now that she has her beloved guitar, I've nicknamed her 'Jimi'. She didn't get it. Hopefully she will one day.

Bobbi/Jimi saw the guitar I got from my last trade and just about dropped her jaw on the floor. She didn't so much offer me anything as much as she asked what I wanted. Heh. I told her I wanted a business location for my wife. I think she thought I was serious.

Now without a doubt the guitar was the most popular item that my students fawned over. I got all kinds of offers. Originally Bobbi/Jimi offered a 1966 Fleer Pete Rose card. I found that kinda cool, but knew the guitar was worth more, especially since it was a Fleer card, not Topps. Another kid offered a football signed by Dan Marino, and I almost took it, but something told me to hold out. I think I knew that Bobbi/Jimi could do better. One thing I knew was that she really wanted that guitar. She kept asking if I'd made a trade yet, kept telling me she had wanted to learn to play guitar for a long time, etc. etc. So I decided to wait a bit. Let it sit. Let it simmer.

I held onto the guitar for two weeks even though I got all the good offers on the first day. When Bobbi/Jimi did up her offer (with her dad's help, I might add), I did some quick research and found out that my guitar was worth pretty much the same thing that her offer was... somewhere around $50 or $60. Maybe a little more. It was hard to tell because her offer's value depended a great deal on its condition. Without getting a good look at the thing and some real time to do research, it appeared that I was basically making a sideways trade. But don't worry. I had a plan.

So what was her offer? A 1966 TOPPS Pete Rose card AND a 1992 Hall of Fame Fotoball. That's Fo-to-Ball, not football. A Fotoball is a baseball with both an autograph and an imprinted colored image of the guy who signed it. They are made exclusively by Major League Baseball for special events... like getting inducted to the Hall of Fame, for instance. This one was a double Fotoball. It had both Rollie Fingers and Tom Seaver's image/autograph. It even came with a certificate of authenticity. My research said the Fotoball was worth about $25-$30 and based on it's condition the Pete Rose card was worth about $40-$60. So, high end, I'd be making a little profit, but low end it was a sideways move.

I sat on the offer another two or three days, thinking, thinking, thinking. In the end, two things made up my mind to trade my guitar for Bobbi/Jimi's Pete Rose card and Fotoball. They were:
1) She REALLY wanted it, and I just couldn't stand to break her heart. Besides, it was just stepping sideways.
2) Though a baseball audience would be much smaller than a guitar audience (and boy was it!), I knew that baseball fans can tend to be, well... fanatic. If I could just find the right person, they would probably be willing to offer something really cool.

So based on my heart and my gut, I made the trade with Bobbi/Jimi, and her smile says it all.

For those of you wondering what her dad had to do with this... apparently he has lots of baseball memerobilia, including a couple of the Fotoballs and more than one Pete Rose card. Once again, extras/doubles of something becomes trash in someone's mind and I reap the rewards.

Well, in this case, what I reaped was the potential of rewards. Did it pay off? You know how to find out. For now I'll tell you only this: I had exactly 1 offer for two weeks, and it wasn't a very good one. And then... bam! Paydirt.

Trade #4

Here's another student who wanted to trade with me. Let's call him... eh... Bob. :)

Bob is a huge baseball fan. Nice. Just what I was looking for. Now just so you know, Bob understood immediately that other people might want that Riversharks baseball and that I was sure to get offers. But he didn't want to be beaten.

So Bob thought long and hard (not really... he actually made his offer within seconds of seeing the ball) and told me he would give me... a guitar. My reaction? Yeah right, kid. But that's not what I said. On the outside I said "Interesting. I'll think about it."

And Bob was right. I did get other offers. Most were other kinds of sports autographs, but none very interesting... just things like a piece of paper with the name of a guy who played in the majors (baseball) for two months or a football signed by a third string quarterback. Truth be told, I really wasn't interested in another sport thing b/c I didn't want to limit my audience. Thankfully, there was Bob.

Sure enough he soon came into school with a guitar. And it was nice. Had a case too. I didn't even think about it. We made our trade that day... but not before I asked him why. Bob explained that A) he was a big baseball fan and knew that a ball signed by a whole team... even a minor league team... was special. He also explained that B) if any one of those 22 players made it to the big leagues, he will have essentially stolen from me. And finally he said that C) he had 6 guitars at home and this was his oldest/smallest (it was a 3/4 sized "child's" guitar).

Again with the logic.

My next trade ended up taking a while. And not for a lack of offers, either. Check out my next post to find out why. In the meantime, enjoy the look on Bob's face as he flaunts his team-signed baseball.

From a paperclip to a guitar in four trades. I think this was the point where I realized that this whole trading thing actually had something to it. Thanks Bob, for being a part of the story.