Day 1 of the Trade-Off Now Complete!

It has now been 24 hours since the competition began.  Of the six of us who supposedly started with hair ties, only two of us have managed to obtain them and begin trading.  These two are, of course, myself and my good friend Kathryn, my co-initiate of this venture.  The rest of the participants are in the process of obtaining their own hair ties.

Kathryn got started right at 1:00pm yesterday, the starting time, by trading her hair tie to her mother for a white porcelain pitcher.  This is how most of us start off in these competitions - people we're close to have some things they would get rid of anyway, and trade them to us for our starting objects.  It's a gimme, but it works.  There are always people who have things they don't want, but which would trade better than the object you've got.

My family hosted a German foreign exchange student a while back, and even though she's gone back home, she's participating too.  She was probably asleep or close to it when the competition began.  She'll be joining in shortly.

Due to an engagement, I was unable to begin trading until after 3:00, but I began my campaign swiftly upon arrival back home.  One of my housemates was moving out, and traded me a cold beer for my hair tie.  I promptly took the beer to my neighbors, a house full of college boys, with whom I swapped for an electric lamp with a nice shade.  It's all about knowing who will value what you have more than other people might.

I took the lamp to another neighbor, whose wife traded for it with an unburned fancy scented candle in a glass container with a very nice wood base.  Her husband is allergic to such artificial scents, so it was sitting in the bottom of her closet.  Again, a lot of people have things they don't actually want.

The two grandkids of one of my other neighbors were in the street by their cars.  She pulled out a bottle of wine.  he offered a duffle bag, two science fiction books, and a black-and-white picture poster.  They consolidated, and I got all of it except the duffle bag in return for the fancy candle, which he told her she could keep, making her smile broadly.  The things he had offered were things he had wanted to get rid of anyway.  The wine was valuable to her.  I let myself smile; I had reached a level of value in my Trade-Off campaign, in four trades, and on one day.

Happy trading!

-The Egg