We traded Hotwheels amongst all the kids on our street.
Recently, I made a barter transaction with a friend. I bartered him 2 juggling clubs for his board game, Settlers of Catan. The transaction seemed fair to both of us. I had two extra clubs, where the minimum amount needed is three to actually juggle. He only had one extra club and wanted to make a full set. I wanted to buy the board game from the store however it costs around 50 bucks, roughly the same as the cost of two juggling clubs. We were both extremely satisfied with the trade because I had no use for the extra two clubs, and he did not enjoy playing the board game I traded him for. In the end, we were both extremely satisfied with the barter.
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?
The first barter trade I made when I was a kid is changing Sega games with others, kind of 2 old games in change of 1 new. Once I changed my watch with my friend’s watch.
I don’t like barter trade, usually is not fair, it’s difficult to find 2 different items for the same cost.
As a child, something along the lines of what mayjer describes, but with different types of trading cards and collectibles:
As an adult, I would say services are more common as parts of barter transactions. Dish washing and cooking come to mind xD
I remember when I was 8, pokemon cards were all the rage. And you traded a piece of paper against a couple other piece of papers. Because you thought that your friend had a rare card, but after inspecting it (after the trade) you saw it was a fake one, printed. So I traded precious cards for a printed useless one. Bummer.
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As a child we used to trade soccer cards, you could trade your cards with just about anyone because we all wanted the most valuable cards. I remember in particular I wanted to have the Diego Maradona card so bad that I offered to trade my entire collection of 100 soccer cards just to have Maradona. It was the best trade I have ever made because I was able to have it signed by Diego Maradona and I still have today. 
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When I was a kid I traded Mission Impossible for the Nintendo 64 to a friend in return for Turok 2, playable on the same system. It was a fair trade because both of us were happy with our barter and both items produced a similar amount of replay value.
I personally remember trading a PlayStation One game with a friend of mine for one of his during my primary school days. I couldn’t exactly remember which games we traded but I do know that we were happy at the end of it. I think it was a fair exchange since we traded games that were similar in value and had finished playing entirely.
I would tutor a fellow student in elementary in exchange for him buying the snacks during our break between classes. Yes, since he had more money and I had skills useful to his situation.
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?
A few years ago I exchanged a portable USB hard drive for a 1st generation iPod. It seemed to be a nice deal at that time, since the iPod would have costed much more than the Usb HDD. But later I realized that this trade was not that interesting in the long term… The iPod became obsolete very very quickly, while the hdd usefulness would still be the same nowadays! Maybe I would have priced the items differently at that time if I had though about the potential store of value of each… 
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Yes!!! I remember trading soccer player cards, I was a game of supply and demand , the most rare cards did require paying with more cards. The exchange was so fun. and yes we all thought it was fair because it was an agreement of two individuals.
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In December 2019 I spent about $120 on two tickets to a concert that was supposed to happen in May 2020, but due to economic lockdown the show was cancelled. It is now October and the show has since been scheduled and re-cancelled again and I have not received a refund. So at the time of the transaction in December, with the expectation of the pay off occurring in May it was of course a fair exchange, because I was willing to give up a particular amount of dollars to be able to have a special entertaining experience, but in hindsight, if I knew that it would be cancelled twice the following year would I have spent that cash on the concert? Only if I knew it was probable that I would eventually receive what I was paying for, since in the transaction at the time I was receiving the promise of being accepted into the event, which could still happen at some point in the future. Now of course if the promise is broken then the transaction would not have been worth it, but there would have been no way of expecting the show to be cancelled, so even in hindsight it would still have been fair, because what I was receiving in the transaction included the possibility of the event being cancelled for any warranting reason, and so in that light I was essentially gambling for a future pay off, and just like any other form of gambling it always seems fair at first until the hands of fate dictate our luck, and even as the cards don’t land in our favor, it was never unfair of an exchange to begin with, because it was always a probable likelihood what I was receiving in the exchange might not meet my expectations.
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I can’t remember any barter transactions I’ve made. If I chose to make such a trade it could be for instance giving a bottle of vodka for someone to do some work for me, like bending a piece of metal with machinery. Or I’d give a bottle of wine in exchange for some food, if at a picnic I’d have plenty of wine and only very little food, and some other people would be in the opposite predicament.
I used to trade conkers and marbles as kid as well as stickers for various sticker books. I also remember trading some cards when I used to play Magic the Gathering as well.
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As JBrewer described it, my first memory of bartering, when I was about ten, was of marbles. the different types and sizes of balls, encouraged us to swap them.
Then came plastic balls, with names of cyclists (if I remember correctly), which we used to play on courses made in sand (on the beach). Again, we traded them to get our favorite racing cyclists.
Finally, I remember having traded sports team “pins” (football, hockey, etc.), which the players and staff had on their jackets.
In these three examples, I always swapped items of the same type, and everyone was happy, because they had the same value.
I don’t think I have traded in my life a good for something completely different. However, I found this idea a good idea when, 10 or 20 years ago, a website offered this type of exchange to individuals. It also seems to me that a blockchain has been created on this system.
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I remember exchanging public cell phone sim cards with my friends, which were very similar to a credit card in size and shape. The value of them was dictated by their number in circulation. Sometimes we would exchange these sim cards for post stamps or other collectibles items. I don’t think it was a fair exchange because we couldn’t know the real value of those items, we were acting just on childish speculation.
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Not so long ago, I exchanged my friend some preliminary design of a desk clock for a set of pre-hispanic stone carved arrow heads. How we came about that is a whole story on its own. Lol, but yeah.
The two items exchanged were:
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- A preliminary engineering design of a desk clock
2.- the set of pre-hispanic carved arrows.
I think the trade was fair because we both saw potential gains on the exchange we were making.
- A preliminary engineering design of a desk clock
I framed the arrow heads and have them in display at my parent’s house. My friend still has plans to develop the detail design of the clock.
True story.
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As a kid we traded sports cards. It was all a matter of negotiation their was not a set a value. Always just a perceived value. You have a card I want. etc.
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Dear Arami_Alfarhani,
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Describe a barter transaction that you’ve been a part either as a child or adult.
This happened today: My neighbor Christa is a professional baker. She makes birthday cakes for dogs. She has a store and everything. So she gets supplies at wholesale. I bake sourdough bread at home and I told her how I couldn’t find rye flour anywhere at a decent price. The next day she brought me two bags of rye flour. All she wanted in return was a loaf of my sourdough bread. -
List the two items in the barter transaction and, looking back, did you think it was a fair exchange and why?So I got a total of 4 lbs of hard to find rye flour for a 2-1/2 lb loaf of Rosemary Garlic Tuscan Rye Sourdough Bread. I believe it was a pretty even trade since it takes about 24 hours to make a loaf of bread like this.
Gaelaxy
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I used to exchange some cars stickers as a child. Looking back, From my point of view it was a fair trade, because the other person got the rare sticker and in return I got the other missing stickers to complete the album. It’s all about demand…
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