One red paperclip

The last few trades surprised me. A KISS-themed snow globe is worth more than a year's rent in Phoenix? Someone would trade a house for a speaking role in a film?

You can read more about the snow globe on the one red paperclip blog. It still kind of left me scratching my head though: http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/2006/05/one-kiss-snow-gl...

It looks like after some point his story had enough public interest that free publicity became a factor in the trades, and that definitely helped him climb the value ladder in the trades.

This is a pretty fun thing to try to do with trading cards. Back in the day when I played Magic/Yugioh, I'd start with a janky common card and see how much I could turn it into. You have to exploit differences in how people value cards: the valuations of cards online mostly follows the way competitive players value them, but there are tons of people who play casually and others who just chase shiny/cool looking cards. It was relatively easy for me to turn a janky card into another common card that was useful in competitive decks (ex: fissure/smashing ground in yugioh), and trade those for janky holos with competitive players, which I could then turn into more useful/valuable holos with the collectible/casual crowd, and so on. It's super fun to do a few times just to know that you can pull it off.

The absolute best part of this entire wacky story is where he says on air "I will go anywhere in the world except for Yahk, British Columbia." so someone from that area calls him the next day.

http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/2005/12/one-trip-to-yahk...

Coleman stove for Honda Generator is quite suspect.

I'm guessing early on the goal went from this:

* solve the challenging puzzle of getting from paperclip to house

to this:

* decide which of a thousand rabid fans of your site you want to choose, perhaps some of whom are already offering you an entire house for a coleman stove

This is still being done and I find it interesting but always suspect. I saw one person doing it in my area and in the early times they "traded" for a vacuum cleaner but I am certain that was actually a vacuum that was being given away free. Not really illegal or anything, but it does give you an idea, people traded for something trivial because the thing they traded was something they were throwing away. People give away stuff that is worth hundreds of dollars. People would be surprised. But ultimately that makes the paper-clip to something worth a few hundred dollars relatively easy. I think it starts getting really steep really quick. You can't increase the value of your object by 50% every time. You're just increasing by a little bit. But the one I know of recently started getting trades that were actually companies who were benefitting from the social media profile. So even if they "lost" in a trade they gained promotion from being involved with the project.

Reminds me of the million dollar home page... it is still up: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

I did something like this in college:

pencil - can of bug spray - first aid kit - floor lamp

I only did it for an hour, and it was kind of fun. I think it makes for a great activity for college students, and those with a little bit of perseverance, might make something substantial of it.

I would guess that the total travel costs of this are probably comparable to the cost of the house. This looks like a comparable house (roughly $55k US in 2020): https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/600-3rd-St-S-Kipling-SK-S...

The story is missing a lot, with no details on the travel expenses that made several of the trades possible: X -> Vancouver -> Amherst, Mass. -> California -> Queens, NY. From that point, the article just says "he traded..." without mentioning the mechnanism. Leaving all that out, it's not quite the story of one red paperclip x 14 trades = a house.

In like 2011 or so a bunch of kids came to my door trying to do something like this. I don’t remember what they brought to trade but the only thing I could think of was a big CRT TV I was planning to take to Best Buy for recycling, which they were really excited about. A couple hours later they brought it back because nobody would take it.

and reading the webpage, the Japanese did it first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Millionaire

It's sort of like watching a really good movie, then finding out kurosawa did it 60 years ago.

Did he pay taxes on any of these barter transactions, or did he take the position the house is worth exactly one paperclip?

I read when the original trades were shared online so the story is no surprise to me. But the links in the 'See also' section, especially 'Gudbrand on the Hill-side' made my day.

If curious see also

2018 (a bit) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16875577

I was intrigued until I saw that the house is in a thousand-person village. It feels like the trades were downhill after the truck. I mean, my cousin bought a house in a 30000-person town for ~5000 usd—likely not much of a house but still.