Cover Artist: Kyle Macdonald
The value of a single paperclip is almost too minuscule to even calculate. But when Kyle MacDonald looked at the red paperclip that resided on his desk, he saw an opportunity.
On July 12, 2005 he posted a picture of a red paperclip on Craigslist and asked if anyone wanted to make a trade for something bigger or better. With a promise to visit and exchange items in person with whomever offered to trade an item for his paperclip, MacDonald found himself embarking on a yearlong venture to see how far his little red paperclip could truly take him.
It lead him to his first trade on July 14, 2005 in Vancouver, where he traded the paperclip for a fish-shaped pen. From then on, MacDonald managed to ‘up-trade’ all the way from a Coleman camp stove to a Ski-doo snowmobile, a year’s rent in Phoenix, Arizona, to an afternoon with Alice Cooper. The final trade was made on July 5, 2006, where MacDonald traded a film role in “Donna on Demand” for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan.
In the simplest terms Kyle traded a red paperclip for a house – an almost unfathomable exchange. Yet, this incongruence of value happens everyday in all our lives as we exchange precious commodities such as time, hard work, brain power, freedom, land and open spaces for things that often carry less than a 1 cent value when laid before the proprietor of a scrapyard. On the other hand Kyle shows how quickly an immaterial thought can become transformed into a material force to be reckoned with.
“If I had never traded away that red paperclip and just wondered what would happen, I’d still have the red paperclip on my desk and be making excuses about why I didn’t make a trade,” said MacDonald.
MacDonald provided his fans with a list of “Some of the Ridiculous High Lights” from the experience:
- I was made mayor for the day of Kipling
- Dom (MacDonald’s girlfriend Dominique) and I were made honorary residents of Kipling for life
- I was given the key to the city.
- I received a Guinness World Record for Most Successful Internet Trade
- Kipling erected the World’s Largest Red Paperclip, another Guinness Record
- Dom and I traveled to Japan to be surprise guests on one of those crazy Japanese shows.
- Another Japanese TV show made this.
- I was on stage with Alice Cooper at a concert in Fargo.
- The press had a field day
- I wrote a book about the adventure.
- Volkswagen Spain made a TV commercial based on the story
- I starred in a Mastercard commercial.
- Grolsch Beer made a TV commercial inspired by the story
The boundaries of how we perceive value have been broken down through the trade of this one red paperclip. By engaging others in his search for something more, MacDonald proved that those items, which are naturally disregarded as having no intrinsic value could create dialogue, community, adventure and friendships – that small items when sparking one into action could in truth be worth a lot more than meets the eye.