One TikTok user has viewers stumped as she's aiming to trade a bobby pin for a house. Photo / 123rf
In just three weeks and eight trades a woman has managed to get herself an expensive camera from a simple hair clip.
The woman started her quest while in quarantine, telling people on TikTok of her ambitious endeavour.
"Like everyone else in quarantine right now, I'm looking to do something a little crazy for my friends on TikTok," she said in her first video, which has amassed nearly two million views.
"So here's the plan. I'm trading a bobby pin up until I get a house.
"If you think I'm crazy, in 2006 someone traded a red paperclip up until they got a house. So let's do it."
She said she was posting on eBay, Craigslist and Facebook – you name it.
Her second video – where she had traded her way to some margarita glasses in just a week – has received a massive 20 million views and got 3.7 million likes.
Entitled the Trade Me Project, she documents her trades each time and now has 1.8 million people following along.
She traded the hair clip for earrings before getting the glasses, trading them for a vacuum, which she swapped for a snowboard, then an Apple TV controller, some Bose headphones, an Xbox One with games, a Macbook Pro 2011 and now she's got herself a Canon T6 camera.
The woman said she got the idea from Kyle MacDonald, a Canadian blogger who bartered his way from a paperclip to a house in 14 trades over a year.
MacDonald was inspired by the childhood game Bigger, Better.
The game involves starting off with something small like a pencil to see if you can turn it into something valuable by doing small trades with strangers.
MacDonald's first trade was for a fish-shaped pen and he finished his final trade by giving up a movie role for a two-storey farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan.
He said the experiment showed anything was possible.
"I knew it was possible," he told the BBC.
"You can do anything if you put your mind to it."
"My girlfriend and I paid rent for an apartment in Montreal and I'd always wanted to own my own house and this is how I decided to go about it."
In the latest TikTok quest the woman has fans saying they are "invested" in her journey.
"This is so cool! My church did this a while back, we ended up with a HUGE kids playscape!!" said one commenter.
Another fan said: "This TikTok account is truly the only thing keeping me going in 2020."
Another TikTok user is trading his way from a piece of paper with the word "Simp" on it to a car. In one month he's done eight trades and ended up with a $3000 designer pillow.
