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...
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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
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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


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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

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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.