When I was a kid I used to sit with my younger siblings while they went to sleep so I could stay up longer. It was a fair trade.
Was exchanging gaming cards as a kid with other kids. Depending on the strength/rarity both parties agreed on the value and proceeded to change cards dependant on that.
When I was a small schoolboy, almost everything food or snack can be used for barter trade. Whether it was fair or not, it all depended on the individual or the parties involved in the barter transactions. If everyone is happy, I suppose we can consider them fair. The not so fair barter trade tends to involve a bully or a group bullying kids.
When I was young I traded card games or other sorts of playthings that I was tired of playing, or got twice as a result of receiving a gift with the donator not knowing that I’m already possessing the item. A barter trade with someone who was in a similar situation than me became a win-win scenario for both. Trades were considered fair as long as both parties got items they personally valued higher than the items they owned, which wasn’t so hard to achieve when each person releases an item that is considered redundant or less attractive over time.
I have used eBay to essentially barter for free items. We’ve gotten furniture for free and given away construction materials for free. In each instance the person giving away the items was better served by just given them away rather than pay disposal costs. The person getting the free item had to deal with transportation expenses and physical labor involved of moving and taking possession. These were absolutely good deals. I would have paid more to buy a sofa than necessary ( a part of a tank of gas and some sweat equity) and would have received nearly nothing for the construction materials.
The primary barter that i had was exchanging my yugioh cards to these people I met at this yugioh card store when i was younger they truly didn’t know much about it so I would exchange roughly 6 common cards for a very very rare cards so i never had to spend money on buying packs because I would just trade my commons for rares
As I recall my childhood, there were two main things I remember trading, one was baseball cards and the other marbles. Since that was back in the late ‘40s, it was pretty much trade of “I like that player, I’ll trade you one of mine for that one”. The thought of value wasn’t important, I received what I wanted. If I only had those cards now. 🥲😂
As a mmorpg gamer, specifically Everquest, a huge part of the game is buying and selling in game items. In the early days, you could actually sell in game items on eBay, which I took full advantage of and paid my way through a few semesters of college. Then introduce the Chinese game farmers which ruined that aspect of the game, over twenty years later, the game is still going and Sony had introduced Kronos into the exchange system, which can be purchased for real money payable to whoever now has purchased the rights to the game. Daybreak currently owns the game. These tokens can be used in game to barter for items or pay for a month of game time.
I can’t really remember many instances. Probably trading card at a certain points. It was fair as long as both party thought they get value out of the trade. But that value was just subjective to the participant and not something that was clearly determined. So from someone external it may have been unfair.
A barter transaction I was a part of as a child was when I traded my fruit snacks for my friend’s kool-aid jammers. Kml looking back at it I had the better of the exchange because the drink was worth more the the snacks plus I was thirsty 
Clearly marbles trading / exchanging. Different size, colors, complexity meant different “value”. Ex: 1 big for 3 small marbles.
Same for football cards where the value was the actually rarity of the card / if the player was very famous.
We tried to keep it as fair as possible, but it is always difficult as there was no actually official convertion tool to help us value the items. So we got regularly scammed 
In my childhood there was an exchange of showing my pokemon cards for an icecream
I exchanged the wheels of my skateboard for somebody else’s skateboard wheels. You can assess wheels based on three traits: the bearings, the width and the wear. The bearings were superior to mine, as was the width (wider than mine, more grip although less nimble) but were much more worn out than my wheels.
Hence, it was not a good trade. Basically traded by new wheels for second hand wheels cause the bearings made the wheels spin faster.
As a child I would trade McDonalds toys with other kids in the restaurant, a prime example of this was when I’d get a girls toy, and another girl in the restaurant got a boys toy. I’d offer to trade my toy and we’d both be happy. Also if I got a toy I already had, then I would ask another boy in the restaurant if they already had their toy too, if they did then we would trade so we would both get new toys. Looking back I think these were very fair trades, where both parties left happy, and with same value items.
I once had the opportunity to barter trade and, unfortunately, I didn’t take it.
I was selling my at home gym because at that stage I wasn’t using it and my father told me to get it of the patio. So I listed and advertised it on secondary markets like OLX or eBay and a man sent me an offer to trade me his generator for my at home gym. At that stage I was 15 so I thought the man was mad but now at 20 I still think he is mad.
Describe a barter transaction that you’ve been a part of 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 barter transactions that I was a part of as a child was trading hockey cards and toy replica cars called hot wheels which were the rage when I was a kid. In hockey cards everybody collected them so the individuals that you could trade was very wide. Wish I had some of them today as they are quite valuable. The second item I traded was hot wheels, I always had extras of some really cool collectibles due to generous family members so sometimes I traded one rare car for two cars that were no longer available or something. The transactions were fair for me not so much to the kid that gave up two cars for my one.
Swapping football stickers in the playground as a child. Exchanges were fair as the market was transparent, fairly liquid and efficient. The value of individual stickers was dynamic over time and different for each trader based on the state of their collection creating constant new opportunities for trading.
as children i barter football player cards with friends.
lately i have barter with some friends for wine/beer for chopped wood and camping experiences
Hmm. I dont have a conventional barter story with physical items, but I do have one thats sort of related.
When I was a kid in NY/NJ getting a car wasn’t super easy because of price of car + storage + insurance. The guy I worked with was looking for someone reliable and trustworthy. Within a month or 2 of knowing him he gave me 2 cars. They were hoopties, but cool as hell because he was an airbrush artist.
With that gesture I was reliable and made sure to not lie to him. Those 2 cars traded for an attempt at my loyalty. Was a it a good trade? 2 cars for my loyalty?
Hell yeah. 20 years later this guy is still my best friend and his brother is my other best friend. They are family. Best trade I ever did in my life.
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We actually did a barter experiment of trading up, starting from a paperclip, we traded into a lightbulb and eventually our group traded an old clock for a couple of beers at a pub. Obviously there was a lot of goodwill involved due to the story of what we were doing, thus it did not feel very fair for the opposing trader, it was a lot of fun though.
Also, I made websites for 2 friends of mine for which they paid me back in making my garden look good and cleaning/polishing my car. Both of these exchanges did not feel very fair to me, since I didn’t have a garden yet at the time, and when I moved to a house with a garden he didn’t have any time to do it. The guy who cleaned my car, did actually do it and my car looked very nice afterwards, but in hindsight it wasn’t something I would have ever gotten someone to do, since I don’t particularly value a nice looking car, I just deem it as a functional vehicle, not something to flaunt with.
Last but not least I traded a lot of pokémon cards when I was young, sometimes these trades felt fair, sometimes… not so much. For example we would use psychological tricks (I know, kids right ':D) like other seemingly neutral kids (who were on our side) would act as a third party verifying that the trade was fair if the opposing trader was doubting, and by peer pressure they would make the trade.