I bent the rules a little for this one. I checked with the Project Oversight Board (me) and, thank goodness, the ruling was in my favor.
Technically, this wasn’t a trade. This was a sale, and then a purchase. Here’s why.
The seats were popular. Facebook Marketplace has a feature (or used to have it? It seems to have disappeared of late) that shows you how many people have viewed your item. Most of my items saw decent traffic — 300 views, 500 views, maybe like 120 views for the pink bicycle before I traded it.
The seats got more than 2,500 views. People were curious, if not interested.
And I got inquiries here and there, though they were always for purchase. Nobody wanted to trade.
This went on for weeks into months while I traded other things and watched this item rack up the views with no takers. I kept lowering the price until I finally listed it for $110 for all five. I just wanted them gone.
Then Dan (not his real name) wrote. He and his partner were very interested. They were building out a media room, had lots of space, and these would be perfect. They had a truck (and what a truck!) to come retrieve them, and would pay via PayPal to facilitate distancing.
Dan even paid a week in advance to hold the seats. In the meantime, he looked around for things he could trade, because he knew that was my preference. Didn’t find anything that made sense for either of us, so (digital) cash it was.
Dan and Steve (also not his real name, probably) arrived on a Saturday and loaded the seats into their purple 1965 GMC pickup (!!!), complimented me effusively on my house, and were on their way.
[Fun fact: They live on the corner where I used to live, know my old landlord, and used to hear my band play when we practiced. Small world, but yep, that truck has South Berkeley written allllll over it.]
This whole thing was a tiny bit bittersweet, as those theater seats made for many a fun movie night with friends and lovers. But I’ve grown beyond them, and they don’t suit my place or my lifestyle anymore.
And they’ve definitely found the right home. Dan stayed in touch with me and sent me photos as he stripped the paint and refinished the seats.
So now I had $110 to put toward a new item to trade. That’s not a ton of money, but it’s not nothing. After some searching, I found a new-in-box and never opened roomba-style vacuum robot. Worth about $135 new, probably $125 re-sold unopened, and I bought it from a very nice woman in East Oakland for $100. (She brought it out with a spray bottle of Lysol and sprayed it down right in front of me, lol)
There’s been a little interest so far, but I’ll be patient about this one. Someone will have something good in exchange for this vacuum — a drone, a cheap acoustic guitar, a good blender?
Who knows?
Historic movie theater seats trading line:
Original item value: $110
Number of trades to date: 1
Latest trade: Historic movie theater seats ($110) for [$cash] for Ecovacs Deebot N79@ vacuum robot ($125)
Total line value dollar increase: $15 lol
Total line value percent increase: 13.6%
#traded 