One red paperclip
website
One red paperclip is a website created by Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who traded his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of 14 online trades over the course of a year. MacDonald was inspired by the children's game Bigger, Better. His site received a considerable amount of notice for tracking the transactions. "A lot of people have been asking how I've stirred up so much publicity around the project, and my simple answer is: 'I have no idea'", he told the BBC. The story has inspired countless copycats, who have attempted to trade their way up from a paperclip or other small items to something expensive, with varying degrees of success.
History
MacDonald made his first trade, a red paper clip for a fish-shaped pen, on July 14, 2005. He reached his goal of trading up to a house with the fourteenth transaction, trading a movie role for a house. This is the list of all transactions MacDonald made:
On July 14, 2005, he went to Vancouver and traded the paperclip for a fish-shaped pen.
He then traded the pen the same day for a hand-sculpted doorknob from Seattle, Washington.
On July 25, 2005, he travelled to Amherst, Massachusetts, with a friend to trade the doorknob for a Coleman camp stove with fuel.
On September 24, 2005, he went to California, and traded the camp stove for a Honda generator.
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This entry incorporates text from “One red paperclip” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.