One Red Paperclip

I don’t know if you recognize him, but you are looking at Kyle McDonald. Though he may not look like it in this picture, you’re looking at a great steward. It all started with this (SHOW PAPERCLIP): One red paperclip. Kyle used it to start a series of trades which he hoped would end in him trading for a house.

How did it turn out? Well, on July 14, 2005, he went to Vancouver and traded the paperclip for a fish-shaped pen. The pen was traded the same day for a hand-sculpted doorknob from Seattle. On July 25, he went to Amherst Mass and traded the doorknob for a Coleman camp stove (with fuel). On Sep 24, he went to San Clemente, Ca. Where he traded the camp stove for a Honda Generator. On November 16 he traded the generator for an “instant party”: an empty keg, an IOU for filling the keg wiht the beer or the holder’s choice, and a neon Budweiser sign. On Dec 8, he traded the “instant party” for a Ski-doo Snowmobile. Then he traded the snowmobile for a two person trip to Yahk, British Columbia in Feb of 2006. A little before that, on Jan 7, ‘06, the second person on the Yahk trip gave him a cube van fo rhe privilege which he traded on Feb 22 for a recording contract with Metal Works in Toronto. On April 11, he traded the recording contract to Jody Gnant for a year’s rent in Phoenix. On May 26, he traded the year’s rent for one afternoon with Alice Cooper (though I can’t imagine why), then traded afternoon with Alice Cooper for a KISS motorized snow globe. On June 2, he traded the snow globe to Corbin Bernsen for a role in the film Donna on Demand. Then on July 5, less than one year from his first trade of the paper clip, he traded the movie role for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan. Not bad stewardship of his paperclip, huh?