User:GravityFong/Reader's Digest/Jan 2007/Trading Up

Take two vegetarians from Vancouver, a ceramic artist from Seattle, a shock-rock legend, a TV star turned Hollywood producer, a town with an impish sense of humor, a whimsical quest dreamed up by a 25-year-old free spirit, mix them together and what do you get? One of the most improbable swaps imaginable: a paper clip for a house. It all began the summer of 2005. Kyle MacDonald was a restless young Canadian who asked himself a simple question: How far could he get if he played Bigger and Better, a kids' scavenger hunt game, on the Internet? The way it worked was players took a mundane item -- say, a pencil -- then scattered out into the neighborhood, knocked on doors, traded up, then reconvened and voted on who had made the biggest and/or best swap. "I decided instead of knocking on a neighbor's door, it would be fun to knock on the Internet's door and see what people had to offer," Kyle explains simply. It was pointless, yes. It was goofy, certainly. But it was fun.

So Kyle sat down in his parents' house in Vancouver, British Columbia, took a photo of a little red paper clip that was sitting on the desk and put this notice in the barter section of the local craigslist, the classified-ads website: "I want to trade this paper clip with you for something bigger or better, maybe a pen, a spoon, or perhaps a boot. If you promise to make the trade, I will come and visit you."

Not far away, Rhawnie Vallins heard her roommate and fellow vegetarian, Corinna Haight, read Kyle's posting. "We were, like, is this guy serious?" Rhawnie phoned Kyle and found out that indeed he was. The silliness of it was so appealing they agreed to swap a wooden novelty pen shaped like a fish for the paper clip.

The next morning, a laid-back guy with curly hair met Corinna and Rhawnie in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. They made the swap, took some photos and promised to keep in touch. The game, as Sherlock Holmes would say, was afoot.

Because Kyle had a) promised to make every trade face-to-face but b) had no money, he was limited to places he could visit cheaply or for free or that were easy to get to from his apartment in Montreal.

His next trade was in Seattle because he and his family were on their way to a Mariners game. They stopped to see Annie Robbins, a ceramics artist. Kyle checked out her array of items -- a banana, a container of fish food and a little ceramic knob made by an eight-year-old boy. The knob had an odd face -- a bug-eyed stare and a squiggly smile. "It looked like E.T. after he had taken a lot of drugs," Kyle says. He went straight for it.

Next up was a two-burner camping stove offered in Amherst, Massachusetts. Kyle took it partly because the trader, a craigslist devotee, begged for the little knob ("I HAVE to have it. It would be perfect for the top of my espresso maker"), and partly because Amherst was on Kyle's way to Manhattan, where he was meeting friends. The stove then went west with Kyle and his mom to Camp Pendleton in California where they exchanged it with a U.S Marine for a small gas-powered generator.

By then it was late summer and the offers were petering out. Kyle had a generator he didn't need, a game no one wanted to play anymore and an amusing little experiment that was dead in the water.

He was ready to drop it in November, but decided to give it one last shot. He spent a night, as he put it, "hammering together" a blog, which he called oneredpaperclip.com. In it he announced he was trading from a paper clip up to something bigger and better: a house.

Within 24 hours of putting the word out, Kyle got 120,000 hits, a vast improvement over the 20 or so he'd been getting before. In webspeak, his site had gone viral. The trade offers poured in.

The list reads like a dadaist garage sale: 10,000 lifetime memberships to a date-a-golfer service, 1,000 Glow Stick Powered Basketballs, a 1974 fire truck, a tour of Air Force Two, a partly burned-down house in Newfoundland, ten pieces of tile from one of Saddam Hussein's castles, ten hectares of land in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a set of 14-karat removable gold teeth, a three-foot shark, a dozen quarts of homemade sauerkraut, one slightly used engagement ring, a herd of eight cows in Australia, and -- his two favorite strange items -- a total-body hair removal (available only in Tennessee and Kentucky), and a full-body tattoo.

By June, Kyle's trades had gone from the red paper clip, the fish pen, the funny-faced knob, the camping stove and the gas-powered generator to ...

A neon beer sign and a beer keg Kyle dubbed the One Instant Party kit. He traded it to ...

A DJ in Canada for a snowmobile that was traded to ...

A staffer at a snowmobile magazine that flipped it for a snowmobile trip in British Columbia to ...

An outdoor enthusiast who offered a five-ton truck that was handed off to ...

A record producer for a recording contract that was passed on to ...

A "bohemian geek soul" singer in Phoenix for a year's rent in her duplex to ...

A waitress in Phoenix who offered an afternoon with her boss.

Huh?

Now, her boss was Alice Cooper. That's right, the snake-handling, ghoulish, shock-rock pioneer who is a Phoenix resident and the owner of Alice Cooper's town, the restaurant where the waitress worked. "I can't believe Kyle's getting me to trade myself for him to get a house," said Alice, "but it's just crazy enough that I couldn't resist."

Word spread, triggering a tsunami of offers from Cooper fans. Of them, Kyle selected a rock-and-roll snow globe with the KISS rock-band logo and a guitar inside. Oneredpaperclip.com fans went ballistic at such a bonehead trade.

But there was a method to Kyle's madness, and we're getting ahead of the story. Two months before, producer Corbin Bernsen, best known for his acting role in the hit TV series, L.A. Law, heard Kyle being interviewed on the radio. Bernsen was writing a psychological thriller called Donna on Demand, and decided to offer a part in the movie.

Kyle loved the idea but had nothing to trade.

Weeks later, he was talking to one of the Alice Cooper bidders, Mark Herrmann, an aspiring rock-concert photographer. "I really wanted to trade with him, but nothing he was able to offer seemed like a step closer toward the house," Kyle says. "Then, in a sort of eureka moment, I thought of Corbin." Kyle knew that Bernsen has a world-class collection of more than 6,000 snow globes. "I said, 'Mark, you might think I'm crazy, but do you have any snow globes?' His answer was, 'Yes. I have a KISS snow globe.' "

The next call was made to Bernsen, who said, "Not only do I want that snow globe, I need it!"

By then it was late June. The pressure was on. Months before, Kyle had let slip to a reporter that he hoped to get a house by July 12, the anniversary of the day he came up with the idea. So here he was, three weeks before the deadline and no sign of a house. Kyle was nervous.

Out of the blue, he got a call from Kipling, Saskatchewan, a small town (pop. 1,100) that's just over the U.S.-Canadian border near Minot, North Dakota. Kipling made Kyle an offer.

On July 12, 2006, precisely one year after he began his journey, Kyle accepted the keys to a three-bedroom house at 503 Main Street in Kipling. Out front stood a 12-foot-tall red paper clip that the town had built.

Nearly two months later, on Labor Day weekend, the little town of Kipling held what Kyle termed Saskatchewan's Biggest Housewarming Party Ever, about 2,000 strong. Corbin Bernsen was there, holding an open audition for his movie, as were 12 of the 14 traders.

On the last day, Kyle borrowed the original red paper clip from Corinna Haight, bent it into a ring, then got down on one knee and proposed to his French Canadian girlfriend, Dom, who replied, "I guess I have to say oui."

By the time it was over, Kyle's site had over 7 million hits, and he had a contract for a book and a deal for a movie.

Looking back, Kyle says the best part of the whole project was the pure fun of it. "Everyone asks what was your favorite trade. The one red paper clip for the fish pen. That's it," he says softly. "There's no argument."