And OK it might be decayed too - "Process Before 02/1997", it says on the box.
Now I didn't actually trade anything for this item. No, more like I rescued it from a rubbish bin, literally. So I still got it for nothing.
I like to think of all trading nothing items as being in a sort of family tree. Well, this old Kodak film has just been adopted into the family.
Although 10 years past its "best before" date, I hope someone out there has an old camera and wants to try taking pictures and making slides from this film, and maybe they'll even send digital versions back here for us to enjoy... yeah, I think there's potential for a really interesting trade here alright.
Other than that, there are a few strong possibilites for trades in the coming weeks and months, I hope to tell y'all more soon.
Posted by Andrew @ 3:07pm
Wednesday July 25, 2007
The Boys Are Back In Town
... a portable television... a mini hi-fi system... a therapeutic motorised water thing... a clothes peg...
All very tempting offers for sure. Just haven't quite been tempted yet, so I still have one whistle.
Where in the world would you stumble upon a glittering 25000 tile 3x3 metre mosaic like this?...
In an Irish retail park of course!
Actually in Tile and Bathroom World at Mahon Point outside Cork (more about it here).
I was lucky enough to see Phil Lynott and his Grand Slam band play in front of a couple of hundred greasy students late in 1984. Not exactly a stadium gig, but he still had a blast all the same...
And now I'm back in UK.
Posted by Andrew @ 11:57pm
Wednesday July 18, 2007
So...
... I still have one whistle.
Some interesting offers, and still hard to know at this point who will be the next owner. But I have a feeling one whistle could be in for a long trip. Possibly.
No deal done yet though, so please do keep the offers coming - and ya never know!
For Trade 11 I travelled further out my way than for any trade to date.
Manchester to Leicester Square in London to Manchester.
A long way for a whistle.
But it's a really interesting shiny new whistle, and I think it was a great trade!
I got the whistle by trading with Kyle MacDonald, who...
... well if you don't exactly know what Kyle is best known for doing, check out this brief history of the one red paperclip story: either CLICK HERE or below...
All in all, quite a story. And I read somewhere Dreamworks have the rights to a movie, so that should be fun one day.
And don't get it all wrong: No Kyle MacDonald = No trading nothing. And if you don't like this trading nothing thing I am doing, blame Kyle!
So how did we end up doing a trade?
Through reading his blog, I had known for a few weeks that he would be in London, England, last week. And I had decided I would probably make a trip to meet him and hopefully do some sort of trade with him if he was up for it. Yeah that would be cool, I had thought... just so long as I didn't come out of it feeling like I traded down!
We had agreed by email that Kyle would take my old wooden matchbox, in exchange for me taking a copy of his short-titled new book "one red paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved his Dream With the Help of a Simple Office Supply", with a special message written inside for the next owner...
I haven't read the book by the way... yet. Because I sort of won a copy. Which hasn't arrived yet.
So anyway, two days before his trip Kyle blogged that he would be trading "Richard and Judy's amazing Replica 1870 London Metropolitan Police Whistle... in central London on Monday July 2 at 3pm", the location later confirmed as "the Swiss Bank on the corner of Leicester Square".
So I showed up at 3pm, hoping to come home with Kyle's amazing whistle, and there he was, talking on his disposable mobile phone.
Once he was done I introduced myself, and told him I wanted his whistle!
Kyle then went off to do some TV stuff...
And before I knew it he came over and said he was ready to trade!
I wasn't sure how this TV thing was supposed to work, but I could see they were suddenly waiting for me. So I put on my hi-tech rain protection system and grabbed RedBack the bottle opener to trade. I could have gone with the old match box, but RedBack it was, for some reason. Looking back, I think RedBack was my least valuable item, in theory anyway, because I got her by trading literally nothing, so maybe subconciously I didn't want to be seen trading down with Kyle!...
But whatever, I then tried to muster any untapped acting skills I might have for Richard & Judy - I was supposed to be a passer-by! - and we did the trade...
So let's see...
Kyle traded up from his whistle to my bottle opener.
And I traded up from my bottle opener to his whistle.
And of course this wasn't TRADE 1 - it was Trade 11!
Oh look, somebody has thoughtfully uploaded the whole Richard & Judy segment - thanks somebody! Trade 11 is near the beginning - either CLICK HERE or below to view...
So it really is goodbye to RedBack this time... and didn't she finally go in style?
Kyle soon after traded RedBack on, and I experienced a bit of a panic attack, must admit. I even tried to trade her back with Ollie the metal fly! "Yeah, that metal fly is pretty cool" - Kyle tried to help me out, but no deal!
Later on I was glad RedBack was finally gone. Because this is all about trading up, not hanging on. Besides, I have the email address of the new owner, who lives in New York, already familiar terrain for RedBack... so hopefully we will be getting RedBack news updates from New York once in a while.
Here's my last photo featuring RedBack, in Paris or somewhere...
Since we traded I called Kyle before he left London, for an exclusive interview! Actually sounded like I interrupted him more like - he was "in Camden drinking cider in the sun!"
So I hit him with just the one question: was the whistle trade his first in the UK, or indeed Europe?
To which Kyle answered "Yes, the first in Europe". End of interview.
And I'm gonna argue my trade was the very first, since Richard & Judy appeared to forget trading the whistle for a book!
So what now for the whistle?
I'm starting a trading nothing offshoot, starting today!
I'm gonna start with the whistle, and trade it up as far as I can, but, in the spirit of one red paperclip, always one item for one item, and only for useful/practical trades.
And I'm gonna to call this offshoot "one whistle" (formerly "one shiny whistle", that's right), and I'm gonna see if I can trade up one whistle to something bigger/better that Kyle's house over fourteen trades!!
(Unless at some point I feel I need to break the one whistle chain to help me get to the Rolls Royce/Bentley quicker).
And along the way, assuming I get somewhere, I'm gonna compare my trades with Kyle's trades at the same stage - eg. compare Trade 3 trades.
And as always, I'll go to you if we agree to trade.
Oh, and...
... watch out here for news on what Kyle trades up to from this whistle!! Richard & Judy asked him to report back "in about a month". Last I heard he traded the Judy garden gnome on Gerry Ryan's radio show in Dublin...
Finally... today is exactly a year since Kyle got his house and two since he started out... I think they even call today one red paperclip day somewhere, so happy that.
I had some interesting soup for lunch today, kindly provided by my former landlady Kate. Home made spaghetti soup. That's full-length spaghetti. And a chicken drumstick was dropped in too. And I was told to make do with the spoon provided, or do without.
Even with the messy face at the end of it, all in all an excellent recipe altogether, I thought.
Anyway, Trade 10.
Mairi Stone lives in perhaps the most unusual house I have ever been in. It's a long 2-storey house, but if you want to get from one end of the house to the other on the ground floor, well... you can't - unless you go either outside or upstairs. It is certainly a house full of character, and it is certainly unique.
I invited Mairi to trade with me after finding her featured in a booklet that I picked up in Kinsale. She likes to create unique pieces, so I learned on visiting her website, which I thought was perfect. Yeah, she definitely has this uniqueness thing going.
So I drove over to Mairi's pad - an hour and a half from Kinsale - over a month ago, intending to hopefully reach an agreement and trade Stan on the day. And we did reach an agreement alright, only it involved Mairi creating something special for trading nothing, so the trade would just have to wait a few weeks... so it was a good trip, and my daughter made a new friend which made it even better. And although we hadn't traded yet, I left Stan behind - looked to me like a great place for a huge spider to be a huge spider, and Mairi and Co. didn't want him to leave anyway.
A few weeks later Mairi was ready to trade, so I made the trip again with my daughter.
I wasted no time in giving Mairi & Co.'s home even more character - I thoughtfully left my own prints, quite liderally mate, on some freshly laid cement, allegedly:
I couldn't see what all the fuss was about myself, I was more worried about my shoes...
Mairi then showed me the piece she had made especially for trading nothing. In my humble opinion, a super cool creation...
Being a keen photographer, she then took a few display pics before setting everything up for a photo of the trade for prosperity.
She was even using a tripod! So I figured she must know what she is doing, and kept my mouth shut.
All Geoff, our volunteered photographer, had to do was press the button.
But at the right time too, of course.
So we were both delighted to trade...
... and Mairi was so excited her hand started to rotate very fast, which I thought was a little unusual...
... and then somebody put the radio on...
To learn more about Mairi, please check out some or all of the following:
To learn more about the items Mairi traded to me please visit Up For A Trade, and if you want to trade for any of them or indeed any item(s) up for a trade, just make me an offer and we'll take it from there - you can contact me here.
Announcing my new adventure within my adventure - one shiny whistle!
I got the whistle by trading RedBack the bottle opener with Kyle MacDonald, the dude who traded up from a red paperclip to a house. And our trade was screened on Richard and Judy...
So this really is an extra extra special whistle - the previous owners were Kyle and Richard & Judy, and it is the first item in Kyle's Richard & Judy trading up quest - they challenged him to see how far he could trade up the whistle over "about a month"!
Yes, a special whistle indeed.
And now you have the chance to be the next owner!
I now want to trade it up, starting from Thursday July 12, 2007. Because that will be the first anniversary of Kyle getting his house, and also the second anniversary of Kyle starting out on his amazing journey - I think they even call it one red paperclip day in Canada!
So, in the spirit of one red paperclip, and to add some extra je ne sais pas to my own adventure, I will trade up the whistle with the following "rules":
I will only trade one item for one item at a time - ie. no multi-item trades.
I will only accept useful/practical trades.
And as I progress we can have fun comparing my trades to Kyle's! (eg. compare our trade 3's)
Maybe I will trade it up to some sort of house in a year... who knows!
So I will trade it up over a year and see how far I get... unless the chain has to be broken at some point to help me get my target Rolls Royce.
Because, just to be clear, the whistle is still a trading nothing item.
I will accept your offers now, and the trading will start on Thursday. Just remember - something useful/practical please.
Oh and I will even be giving one shiny whistle its very own page, which will even be linked from the main menu! if you can believe that.
Posted by Andrew @ 13:43pm
Thursday July 5, 2007
A Rather Good Few Days
So I traded with Mairi Stone on Saturday way out in the West of Ireland...
... then on Sunday I returned to the North West of England...
... and on Monday I made a daytrip to London especially to trade for a whistle, which I didn't even know was gonna be mine till I got there... that's right, just a whistle.
So two more bloggy trade reports coming soon.
And I hope someone uploads the best-ever-by-a-long-way Richard & Judy segment soon. I know they shouldn't, but...
