Trading instead of buying/selling?

[mikeybyte1]

I was wondering if anyone has tried to trade stuff instead of buying/selling? There are a lot of new sites that have opened up in the past year that let you swap stuff instead of buy/sell. Has anyone tried these out? It seems like a good way to save cash since it's all just swapping. Any tax concerns?

[maat55]

I would find it hard to know if things are of equal value. I guess , since your trading used stuff, you could worry less about small differences if you could use what your getting and don't need what your trading.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

I see ads on Craigslist for cross-country house trades. I always wonder about those. The possibility of finding houses to trade seems so remote. Most interesting barter I've personally heard of was a fellow who traded carpet installation for personal counseling. Right now I have some workshop tools I could trade for some really good garden tools, but I doubt I'll even try to pursue it.

[Taribor]

Reminds me of that story about the kid who started out with a paperclip and traded up for a house after a dozen trades or so. Kind of a neat story about a fun idea taking off:

one red paperclip

[Russ G]

I don't trade as such but I have used freecycle for stuff. It's a lot nicer to think that your old stuff goes to someone who can make use of it instead of being dumped. I look at what's posted by others too - just haven't seen anything I want yet...

As regards trading, there was a new site mentioned on the radio yesterday where you could swap surplus vegetables with folks in your area - be interesting to see if it catches on!