An interesting site I came across today where a Canadian man is trying to trade a single red paper clip for a house. Impossible, you say? Well, right now he’s traded up to a year’s residence in Phoenix, so he’s not doing too badly for less than a year of work.
It’s an interesting exercise in bartering, Internet style. Each step he is counting on someone’s willingness to trade something for less than it is worth (to them – this is all relative). This may be because they no longer value the item they’re giving away, or they’re glory hounds. There may be some other reasons too, but I’m not really sure. I’m sure there are smarter people than me who can psycho-analyze this, but I thought it was an interesting read at least.
I still say the offer of a bar in Mexico for a year sounded almost too good to pass up – legalities be damned.
“This may be because they no longer value the item they’re giving away, or they’re glory hounds.”
I saw this story yesterday, but the glory hounds aspect didn’t occur to me. What if all the publicity ruins his fun? E.g., if some magnanimous developer reads the story and gives him a house in exchange for the publicity.
How would that be spoiling his fun? He’d have reached his goal …
I’ve been following this for a few months, it’s pretty amazing. One of his premises is to avoid paying any taxes, which apparently don’t apply on trades.
He’s had a lot of publicity in the last months, CNN, the Today Show, CBC, CTV, world wide news papers, Macleans, etc. I think if some one wanted glory they’d have stepped up by now?
It turns out this guy is the son of an acquaintance of my dad’s. It was interesting to hear some of this from that point of view.
It would kind of spoil his fun, I think, like having any challenge that you undertake for its own sake being made easy. Imagine being dropped on Mount Everest by a helicopter. If you just want to be on top of the mountain, great. But if part of the fun is the challenge… not so much fun.
Well it’s seems pretty obvious that part of the key to this trade was all of the publicity that the town of Kipling will get.