How A Canadian Traded A Red Paperclip For A House
Posted July 27, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
But unlike most of us, Kyle McDonald wasn’t about to let that stop him.
The saga of how the Montreal man secured a house without spending a dime has become the stuff of legend on the Internet.
His story is even more incredible because it all started with a single red paperclip.
In July 2005, he put the brightly coloured object, worth a few cents at most, on a popular trading site called craigslist.com and asked if anyone wanted to exchange anything for his less than precious possession.
Not long after, someone responded, offering Kyle a fish-shaped pen. But his ultimate goal of finding a house to live in for free seemed a long way off.
Still, this young trader to the cause was determined to make it happen.
“I put myself in a situation where, if I didn’t trade a red paper clip for a house, I was going to look like a total idiot,” he muses.
McDonald eventually swapped that fish pen for a doorknob and then a camping stove. And the swapstakes continued until he finally wound up with a day spent with Alice Cooper, which he traded for a small role in a movie with soap star and former “L.A. Law”-yer Corbin Bernsen.
He gave that up for the house in Kipling, Saskatchewan.
Along the way, he met a lot of strange swappers.
“There was people that were throwing crazy objects at me but really wanted to say, well, we’ll give you this, but you have to mail it to us and all that kind of stuff. I wanted to meet people in real life and shake their hands.”
His journey from homing in on a simple red clip to homing in on an house took almost exactly a year.
“From July 12th, 2005, to July 12th, 2006, I had all these great adventures, met interesting people, got to go to different places that I’d never been before, and the trades were sort of like a bonus to that whole thing,” he beams.
What’s next? Kyle plans to trade the one thing no one else can – his own experience – for a book deal, and possibly a movie of the story of his incredible year.
To find out more about his rags to not quite riches trip, click here.
Kyle McDonald’s Red Paperclip Trade Journey
First offering: one red paperclip
Traded for: a fish-shaped pen
Traded for: A clay doorknob featuring a funny face
Traded for: A camping stove
Traded for: A generator
Traded for: An “instant party”
Traded for: A snowmobile
Traded for: An all-expenses-paid trip to British Columbia
Traded for: A panel van
Traded for: A recording contract
Traded for: A year’s free rent in Phoenix
Traded for: An afternoon with Alice Cooper
Traded for: A Kiss snow globe
Traded for: A movie role with Corbin Bernsen
Traded for: A house to live in in the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan.
