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).