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.