I bartered a watch for an Atari video game when I was 11yrs old. I thought it was a good deal for me because I never had played with them as a kid…
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When I was a kid it was very popular to collect pictures ( before the pokemon era 
) so I remember a big part was trading the cards you have for ones you do not have and in this “barter” the Value was given only by us the children who had no idea of economics or what is more valuable , for us the more shiny and colorful ones were more attractive …looking back now I realise how easy it would be to “trick” kids by saying that your card is very rare or more expensive but at the end both cards have no real value ,only the personal value in the eyes of their owner . also looking back I guess it was a relatively fair exchange because all the cards very cheap but we vere thinking of them as something very valuable because for us it was “rare”
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Hockey cards, pogs, marbles were the most common items for trading in my childhood.
Smaller amounts of money was often nominated in the value of bubble gum since you could get two gums for one Swedish krona.
I
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Most of the barter transactions that I have been part of have been basically gift exchanges at Christmastime. This past Christmas, during my class’s party at school, we performed a Chinese gift exchange. The “gag gift” I chose included some kind of child’s plaything and a gift card. Another student had a pack of glow sticks; I gladly traded my gift for hers. I believe it was fair exchange because I wasn’t quite satisfied with the gift I had opened. I am perfectly content with what I have now, even if I’m never going to use it.
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As a child I would trade snacks with my siblings. If I had extra Fruit Rollups and my sister had some extra Gushers, we would barter. Therefore, we both felt it was a fair exchange as we get to enjoy a variety of snacks and not just one type.
I could only recall one experience which was similar to a barter transaction. It was an exchange of books at a community library set up by one of my neighbours. I took two of the books from my bookshelf and put them in the community library, and in exchange, I picked up from the library a book I liked. I think it was a fair exchange, or even a bargain for everyone, because most people would only give up books that no longer have much value to them in exchange of books in the library that are valuable to them. Other than stealing from the library (that is taking books without putting back some books in), I think everyone would enjoy some consumer surplus for a transaction.
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i remember having this remote-controlled car and my neighbour friend had a smaller one which went slower. He always wanted to drive mine instead so we swapped (he only loaned it, he didn’t take it). Suffice it to say I wasn’t the best negotiator.
We also used to trade hockey cards (the trend for me in north of Sweden were 1995-96 and also an upswing in end of 99-00) sometimes you had these doublettes of hockey players in NHL that could be traded for hockey players which were considered better (and probably had a higher trader value in real life) such as Paul Kariya, Teemu Selänne or Peter Forsberg. Sometimes you had a sentimental value to players when you considered them more valuable, or the design of the card was very artistically beautiful which raised the value, even if the hockey player was of mediocre nature.
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A common barter transaction from my childhood was trading yugioh cards. There was a brief period where me and my childhood friends discovered trading cards with each other and started agreeing upon which cards were more valuable than others. The value of these items were beginning to be dictated by who was winning with what cards during recess and lunch. This made the trade value quite volatile. Someone was winning with a card a lot lately, and one child offered his lunch money of $20 because he had no actual cards that would match the value of that card. One week later, everyone realized there was in fact a strictly better version of that card and you couldn’t even trade that ‘powerful card’ if you tried.
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When I was very young (8 years old) I had a Hot Wheels collection.
Some of these mini metal/plastic made cars were very popular and desirable among kids.
The most highly traded ones were the sports and Indy racecars.
I remember trading one of my high profile Indy racer cars for a more in demand Indy racecar.
This was my initial introduction to a bartering exchange and mindset. It was fun to be young!
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When I was very young (8 years old) I had a Hot Wheels collection.
Some of these mini metal/plastic made cars were very popular and desirable among kids.
The most highly traded ones were the sports and Indy racecars.
I remember trading one of my high profile Indy racer cars for a more in demand Indy racecar.
This was my initial introduction to a bartering exchange and mindset. It was fun to be young!
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Just recently, I traded a massive avocado from my yard to a vegetable vendor for a hefty bag of produce. The avocados on my tree a quite big, and relatively rare as the season is just beginning. The vendor perceived it as very valuable judging by the amount of produce he gave me which was at least 4 times the weight of the avocado. We were both very happy which made this a rather fair deal I think.
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As a kid, trading Pokémon cards and trading marbles was all the rage.
The cards weren’t even used to play the card game itself, but just to collect them and show off your rare ones. I would trade a rare card for another rare card, or trade a rare card for a lot of common cards. Back then, this whole deal made total sense, and it’s not something I consider ridiculous or unfair today. This barter supported an interesting subculture among kids.
Marbles were actually used to play games with, and you could win or lose marbles. The big, artsy and colorful marbles were of course deemed highly valuable, and were also traded in the same fashion as Pokémon cards.
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I bartered my freedom for a marriage and then my wife left me when she got a high paying job. lol
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Swapping football stickers at school( I’m way too old for Pokemon!) . You would swap 2 or 3 for one of you’re favourite players.
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I had a few friends I would trade baseball cards with as a child. Since cards were random and you never knew what you would get in any given pack of cards, you could easily trade duplicates for friends’ duplicates to help complete a set or trade for each others’ favorite players. In the end it was win-win.
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As a child my siblings and I would go Trick-Or-Treating and end up with bags of candy. During the next day we would all sit down dump our bags of candy out and barter. I would offer my Kit-Kats for 4 of my brothers Starbursts Candies. I was so happy at this transaction because I didn’t think it was fair because I received 4 candies for his 1 candy, so i got the better deal.
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When I was a child, I often traded toys with my friends. I always thought they were good traded.
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On a Harpfestival where I presented my harpcompositions freshly published and my new released cd with my compositions, a lady wanted to exchange het own copied tunes for my published books… I wanted the lady to have my books so she could get to know my compositions, but the effort I made in studying music for years, composing and finding a publisher was greater the nthe effort she did in making some tunes and copy that herself.
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I can only recall one barter transaction, it was a trade between hockey cards.
I traded a bag with hundreds of useless cards for one extremely rare hockey card, which had 2 Swedish hockey legends on each side, Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg. At that time I was offered $60 for the card but refused to sell it, while the other cards I gave out practically were useless.
If it was fair depends on if the other person enjoyed having many useless cards. But by today’s value, it was definitely unfair.
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A pair of sunglasses that would light up and sparkle for a toy gun. The gun was heavy duty while the sunglasses had the electronic advantage, this was in the 80’s so things that lit up were a hot commodity. The only real way to know if it had been a fair trade would be to know the price of each but as a child it was quite relative
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