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?