The idea of trading or incentive based trading has been all around us. School systems, grading, sporting acheivements. I just never looked at it that way while growing up…Nevertheless I…and probably most of us grew up in these systems. I can remember playing junior football in high school and the coaches had a reward system that included “star stickers” that you received when you were recognized as making a difference or key play during a competitive game. These stickers were proudly displayed on the back of your helmut. If you received more than x stars you were given the opportunity to play with the senior football team as a junior player.
The ah ha moment … the memories are all coming back…lol
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These trades happened in my adolescent years when I enjoyed reading Marvel comic books in the 80’s. I would trade with other kids based on our individual desire for a particular favorite or monthly issue. I personally always wanted to collect favorites so I was always willing to trade a newer issue to get a favorite series. Therefore, comprising the series I wanted even when I didn’t have money to buy when they were released.
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In my youth I would barter action figures for racing cars, comic books and other things for each other.
I remember a friend of mine wanted electric american football men. The “men” weren’t electrified but the board that you used to play the game on was and would vibrate when current was sent to the motor. Anyway, he had an electric slot racing car hat I really wanted. So, I painted some stray players I had to his team and offered him the men for the car.e said no. So I then painted another set of men in his team’s other uniform, put numbers and names of the players to make them look real official. He made the trade as soon as he saw the extra effort I put into the football men. Looking back, I thought it was a fair exchange because the car I wanted was one of his extras and the football men I traded were some of my extras. We both got something we wanted from the other’s surplus.
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I remember, in primary school, we were trade marbles and football (soccer) cards. Some trades were not fair but sometimes you need to sacrifice yourself and gave one or more cards for some other card, for example, Ronaldinho or you need to give a card that you don’t have for another card that you also don’t have, otherwise, you wouldn’t get. But then it was fun. The same thing is with marbles, for example, Brasilian or Mexican was the most esteemed, but for some marble which was precious to you, didn’t exist a price. Those were good days. 
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I traded baseball cards for matchbox cars. I don’t think it was fair looking back because some of the cards were scarce and had increased in value as the matchbox cars I traded for lost value in time.
This was really hard to remember.
As a child, I would trade rice for meat with my big brother at meal time. I loved meat so much that I would offer him a couple of spoonful of rice in exchange for meat. Well, I don’t think it was fair because he would often ask for more rice for a small piece of meat.
When I’s a kid, an older kid convinced me to trade LEGO goods for LEGO gold. He got my coolest LEGO pieces and I got tiny plastic coins painted up to look like gold. 6 year old me learned about being a sucker that day. At least they got me young.
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I changed my pokemon figures for magic the gathering cards deck 
Still have it to this day. And I am not planning to seal, as value is growing every year Pokemon figures ware made in china and bought them from my local Chinese market xD But back in then, there was hype for pokemon cards and figures as well as for magic the gathering card - so the trade was “fair” back then. Now I think I gained a bit more
I have bartered with food my whole life. I always traded with any kind of dishes or ingredients for example slice of pizza for half a hot dog or a savory pie, bar one for slice of cake. My first real barter deal I remember though was swapping Pokemon cards or toys. What makes barter so unique is that the worth of an object always completely varies from one trader to the next. Value is in the eye of the beholder and something that could mean nothing to me could be the most valuable thing to someone else. I truly believe that most of the times I made fair exchanges but sometimes obviously there where bad trades where I and the other trader were not happy with the value we got but that then must be settled and analysed by the two parties…
As a street vendor, I traded one of the items I was selling, a book, for a small breath-activated musical tuning instrument that was inside the handbag of a woman who claimed she had no money but who had emptied out the contents of her bag to find something she might barter with. It seemed she really wanted the book, and I found the tuner to be a unique item, so agreed to the trade. To this day I enjoy owning the tuner, whereas I have forgotten the title of the book I had traded, so I suppose the trade was in the end a fair one for me, even if I did not receive any money from the transaction,
Response:
One of the times that best comes to mind is when I traded a Sega game with another kid in class back in elementary. I gave up a game called Skitchin’ for Mortal Kombat. I left happy with the trade, not sure if he felt the same after. My parents wouldn’t buy it for me at the time but I still found a way 
I let my mother in law stay at my house and in return she provides daycare for my daughter.
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I volunteered my time on my local Boardriders club committee . Got to contribute to improvements in how we did things.
When I was a kid I had an obsession with marbels, I had a huge mango tree (tropical fruit) in the backyard of my house and I barter mangoes for marbles, never money, just marbels!!!
I used to have thousands of magic the gathering cards, that I use to trade for homework answer or lunch! I think it was a fair trade looking backwards!
I remember when I was a child I use to trade some “láminas” (I dont know what’s the english word for that, but they were some paper collectables, that you bought at some “kioskos” -I don’t know the english word for that- and you had to stick them to an album, until the whole album was completed) So history is as follows: in each envelope you had about 5 paper figures and some of them were really common and some of them were really really scarce, so I used to trade a number of common cards for one card that I didn’t have, and many people were doing it at the recess at school. But I don’t remember what was the feeling of doing it really. It was just fun, because when one guy had one of the stickers I didn’t have I didn’t mind giving him many stickers in exchange!!
You made me remember this!!! I thank you because of that (I’m 37 now)
This Year //
Agreed to do video production for my bestie in return for audio engineering services.
Was a bad deal as My BFF dint follow through on either side of deal in reasonable amounts of time, and keeping track of service value gets tricky n even messy often times.
Moving forward, I am certain that paying for services will ensure that I get a better quality product/service.
I’m also avoidin doin biz w/friends n fam n general.
@LORDKALVIN
[tap to hear the song we produced]
I instigated and exchange with Nerd Boy Bobby wherein I gave him a whole lot of marbles (maybe all of them) for two M-80 fire crackers. Bad deal, obviously. Except was it? The deal was driven by a need to blow up my mother’s potato salad. With a cursory understanding of the transaction you’d call me a fool. Nerd Boy Bobby got a better deal, You’re probably saying he had sustained value in the marbles, and I had a very short term gain with the fire crackers. Here’s the deal: I received immense please from this prank. No one liked my mother’s potato salad; I was a hero. That result was easy to predict. What I could never have known was that Melissa, my secret heart throb at the time, had a thing for arsonists. From this example, I’d have to extrapolate the possibility that a barter transaction cannot be judged by the quantity nor the quality of the item being bartered. 15 chickens for 1 pineapple doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good until you realize that seeds from the pineapple were carefully extract, treated, and planted, yielding a fine pineapple plantation. Either that or the guy was allergic to chickens.
I have done many barder transactions over the years, all of them included cars.
I usually got 2 cars for 1 or the other way around and them i fixed them up and sold them.
Describe a barter transaction that you’ve been a part either as a child or adult.
List the two items in the barter transaction and, looking back, did you think it was a fair exchange and why?
In my mid 20’s I owned a pawn shop and a man had brought in a WWII missal, which was washed up onto the shore, to sell me. Not being sure if I could legally purchase the missal, I told him I could not buy it however, I could trade him an item of around 75% of what I felt the missal was worth, in exchange for it. He pointed out a violin I had for sale. The violin was priced for $99.99 however, I had only paid roughly $20 for it. The violin had been sitting on the shelf for over two months and I believed I’d be able to sell the missal to a collector for $125 in a relatively short amount of time, so I accepted the man accepted the violin in exchange for the missal. We both were in agreement that it was a fair exchange.
Unfortunately for me, the missal was still live and highly dangerous, so I had to give it to the bomb squad… for FREE!