During quarantine in her home of San Francisco, Demi Skipper was watching YouTube videos when she stumbled upon a Ted Talk about a man who traded a red paper clip all the way up to a house.
It was about 15 years ago, Skipper found through further research, and she hadn't seen anyone do it since.
"I have to be the second person to do this," Skipper said in a recent interview with Insider. "Given all the time we have in quarantine, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try."
Skipper made two rules for her trade journey. The first was no accepting money.
"It just seemed like it wasn't fair," she said.
The second was that she couldn't trade with anyone she knew. No friends or even friends of friends.
"That also felt like it was too easy," she said. "So it had to be somebody I had never met. I felt like Facebook was a great place to start."
Her first few trades were done in person around San Francisco. Later trades were made through shipping and road trips across states.
Skipper provided all of the following trade values based on what similar items were selling for elsewhere, like Facebook Marketplace.
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