How far can a penny go? Right now, one can quickly say that it wouldn’t get you that much. Or, to be more specific, it’s more of a novelty item now than a currency.
But YouTube content creator Ryan Trahan, wanted to prove that a penny can turn into something much more valuable and that the spirit of bartering is still alive and well.
His goal will surprise anyone.
In his video, he shared that he would turn his penny into a house. Yes, you’ve read that right. He will barter his way to a house.
The challenge started as tough as you’d expect it to be because who would trade anything for a penny? The first thing he got was a pen. Then, he traded off his pen for a small dinosaur toy.
Luckily, he met a dinosaur fan who was more than willing enough to trade it for a tin of mints – or at least what’s left of it.
It was a dead end from then on until he met two interesting strangers.
Apparently, his campaign of “penny-to-a-house” is gaining traction. It gave him a chance to trade the mints for something of value – gas station earphones.
It snowballed from there. After the earphones, the value of his trade just got bigger when he decided to be creative. He raided a local garage sale and traded the earphones for a vintage Polaroid camera. He also gave her a shirt, just so he wouldn’t feel bad.
However, it wasn’t as easy as he thought.
Trahan swore he struck gold and that it was easy to flip the camera into something much more valuable. After all, who doesn’t love a vintage camera?
The answer, surprisingly, is “not a lot of people.” He went from one person to another, asking them if they’d be willing to trade anything for the vintage camera.
A man in a Ferrari refused the offer of a trade saying that if he traded his car for the camera, it wouldn’t be fair to Trahan. Of course, it is, Mr. Ferrari! That’s a vintage camera!
When all hope seems lost, Trahan’s fortune turns.
He got an amazing deal out of the camera for an item that’s three times its value. At that point, Trahan was pretty stoked. It seems that his campaign will succeed.
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But will it? At the beginning of the video, he shared that he only has a week to flip the penny into a house. And with Day 1 ending, it seems that he still has a long way to go.
People all over the internet loved the experiment.
“We kind of did this in middle school!” shared one commenter. “Everyone would team up into groups and receive a paper clip, then go around knocking on peoples’ doors asking if they had anything bigger or better to trade. One time my team won with a couch!”
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He has a whole series about this journey that you can check on his YouTube account. Do you think he succeeded in getting that house?
Watch house this man turned a penny into a house!
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