The One Red Iris Flower Project - Updated Aug 8

Back in 2005, Kyle MacDonald started the One Red Paperclip phenomenon. He began with a simple (but red) paperclip, and started a continuous chain of "trade-ups", with a goal of trading up to a house.

6 years later, I am introducing the "One Red Iris Flower" project. On July 7th, I picked up one of these babies and began a trading sequence of my own. My goal: one Everlasting Destroyer Tonic. It's always good to have a goal, right?

I am going to document my progress here. Both comments and offers are welcome (and admin approved)! Just to note, this is to be a social experiment, rather than a profit engine for myself (there are much better ways to profit). Tell your friends, share this link, and let's see how high we can go! Look for me in-game (Curo Zan) if you want to make any offers, as I'll be doing several trades a day if everything works out, and may not get to your post here in time.

Rules

1) Every trade must get me something better than the previous item, meaning something of a value that is generally agreed-upon to be higher.
2) To keep this legit, I won't be doing any trades with friends or alliance members.
3) Each person may only trade me once (and I thank you for your trades).
4) Each trade must be a straight one-for-one trade, with no other items, services or gold included in the trade.
5) All in game names posted here will be posted with permission from the user.



Phase 1: One Red Iris Flower

On the morning of July 7th, I took a walk outside the Eye of the North outpost to pay a visit to Gwen's special garden. Here I found waiting for me a tamer along with a few animals, and 2 rather red iris flowers. With a quick thought, I picked the one on the left, and so the One Red Iris Flower Project began. Off to Kamadan to see what awaits this one little flower!



Phase 2: One Identifcation Kit (25 uses)

With my head held high, I began spamming the following line in the 2nd American district of Kamadan:
WTT One Red Iris Flower for Something Better ~ The 1RIF Project
It took about 10 minutes, but an unknown Monk opened a trade with me and offered an Identification Kit. I graciously accepted this offer, and smiled at the first official trade of the 1RIF project. We talked a bit, and he was enthused that I was doing something like this. And he wasn't the only one...

One Red Iris Flower traded to "Fluid" for one Identification Kit on July 7th.



Phase 3: One Essence of Celerity

Within seconds of posting my next ad, immediately after my trade with Fluid, another unknown monk opened trade with me. To my surprise, it was quite an upgrade from an Identification Kit. The shiny Essence of Celerity (or a BU as some call it) was offered in trade, and I quickly accepted, my eyes beaming. The trader told me how stoked he was that I was doing this, and wished me the best of luck. Thanks a lot for getting me started so quickly! I like monks

One Identification Kit traded to "Lyssa Heilhand" for one Essence of Celerity on July 7th.


Phase 4: One Glob of Ectoplasm

By this time, I knew I had gotten the ball rolling. I had a popular item and was sure to start getting trades fast...or was I? It took me over an hour to get this next trade, unfortunately. Fluid wanted to trade me again, but I told him about my one-trade-only rule. Luckily I had someone else who took an interest in the project, and after talking for a bit, decided to get me moving on to the next phase by offering me an ecto. I see this as my first major benchmark item. This ecto is going to turn a lot of heads...

One Essence of Celerity traded to "Impala S S" for one Glob of Ectoplasm on July 7th.



Phase 5: One Vial of Dye [Black]

Now the ecto I had just acquired was causing quite a few problems. Since the party search window only showed "WTT Glob of Ectoplasm for", I was getting a lot of curious whispers. Most people wanted to rip me off though, as the ecto is such a wanted item. I suppose one of these curious people felt sorry for me, and wanted to offer a trade. After debating over which white minipet he wanted to give me, he decided to settle on a black dye. Not an amazing trade-up, but a trade-up nonetheless. Now to try and trade away this dye...

One Glob of Ectoplasm traded to "Sy The King" for one Vial of Dye [Black] on July 7th.



Commentary: July 7/8

After a little while, I received an offer of a req 9 Fiery Blade Axe of Enchanting. Not sure of the value of this item, and with a lack of price checking from my alliance, I had to turn it down. By the time I had done some research online, the trader had logged off anyways. Oh well, I'm sure something will pop up. Oh wait, what is that? A new build of Guild Wars is available? Looks like 1RIF will have to wait because Winds of Change is here! Until tomorrow, my friends

Today is July 8th, and I'm going to try and split the day between WoC and 1RIF, so feel free to give me a shout if you see me in game!

Phase 6: One Miniature Pig (undedicated)

Guru has given me a lot of publicity, within an hour of posting this thread, wow! I had an offer of one dedicated Miniature Queen Salma, however I had to turn it down due to the unstable nature of the value of dedicated minipets. I also got a few other whispers from people wishing me luck, so thanks guys!
This trade was particularly special for several reasons, the first being Twitter. I'd like to thank the GWguru admins for tweeting about me (#guildwars). My next trader learned about this project through a tweet, which is amazing. He offered me a very special Miniature Pig named Porkchop. This little guy has been in the possession of the trader for 5 years, oh wow! How lucky I was to acquire such a wonderful item. I'll be sad to let Porkchop go, but progress must be made!

One Vial of Dye [Black] traded to "HUMBLE SERVITOR" for one undedicated Miniature Pig named Porkchop on July 8th.



Phase 7: One White Rabbit (undedicated)

I searched long and hard to find Porkchop a new home. I had several offers of cash and stackable items, but those are against the rules, so I kept searching! After spending hours in Kamadan, I had almost given up when I received a good offer at the late hour of 2am. A rather well-spoken gentleman asked me if I'd be willing to take his bunny off of his hands, so I did. He was quite happy to be the proud owner of one pig named Porkchop, and I was happy to have a new trade. Win-win! Now bed time...

One undedicated Miniature Pig (named Porkchop) traded to "Icy Grasp of Cooler" for one undedicated White Rabbit on July 9th.



Commentary: July 9-12

Things are slowing down a bit. The weekend meant I was socializing a bit more than normal, but I still had some time for GW. I had an offer of an unded Black Moa Chick, but my trader disappeared. On Monday I thought I was being trolled, but it turned out to be some dude who just wanted attention (oh wait, that is a troll). He offered me worthless things like his soul and kidney. I tend not to feed the trolls, but trading was so slow this weekend that I don't have much else to talk about.

Phase 8: One Miniature Celestial Ox (undedicated)

After 3 weeks, and about a dozen insufficient offers, I finally found a suitable trade for my White Rabbit. After I turned down an offer of a Miniature Oola, this trader offered me another animal that I just had to accept. I'm glad to be out of that rut, and I hope this shiny cow thing can get me something even nicer (in a reasonable amount of time).

One undedicated White Rabbit traded to "Jenny Blade" for one undedicated Miniature Celestial Ox on July 30th.



Phase 9: One Everlasting Abominable Tonic

Today marks the one month anniversary of this project (on guru), and what better way to celebrate than by making another trade! This trader approached me with what he thought was an insufficient offer, but I was more than happy to graduate from my "minipet stage" by accepting this tonic. Now I can look like a big ol' yeti as I try to find my next trade partner.

One undedicated Miniature Celestial Ox traded to "I Midnight Ninja I" for one Everlasting Abominable Tonic on August 8th.

It's a nice social experiment, but sadly there's one flaw (in my opinion):
By announcing it's part of your RIF-experiment, people are generally going to be much more supportive. Phase #3 shows this, it's highly unlikely you would get an Essence of Celerity in exchange for an ID-kit under normal circumstances.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not nagging or trying to rain on your parade, I just point out that this experiment will most likely just be a result of how often you encounter nice people who "simply want to help out".

That's actually not a flaw, but rather the actual intent of the experiment. It's more than a power-trading project. The aspects of publicity and community are part of the social side of it, and it's how the original One Red Paperclip was done. I intend to follow the original. In short, these are not intended to be "normal circumstances", as you put it, and should thus provide abnormal results.

The goal of the experiment is to see how many people I can get involved. People getting involved is not a result or side-effect, but the actual purpose.

I do agree that things like Phase 3 are practically donations. The interesting part will be how far this will go. Once you get to a certain point, it goes past people "wanting to help out" because the value of the items gets so high. I'm not trying to push it to see how much "free stuff" I can get, but rather to see what happens once I reach that point.

I am skeptical about how well it will work once the value of items gets higher. With One Red Paperclip, many of the higher-end items had more of an implied, personal, or intangible value. Whereas Guild Wars items for the most part all have a set value, and the knowledge of these values is readily available to the majority of people. I may choose to introduce services as well as items in the trading process, but aside from invites to gold-trim guilds, there aren't many very expensive services available.

Interesting experiment, I have been doing something similar.
I didn't start with an iris though, I traded half of a bad joke for two shamrock ales.

I wanted to give the trading up a try because I had actually been doing this for profit, I would buy el fireworks, trade that for heavy eq pack, trade that for monthly el tonics, which would sometimes then get a mini destroyer or similar. Decided I wanted to try the process from nothing

Awesome, I hope you choose to document your endeavors as well! Trading up can be very profitable, however doing only one-for-one trades like this, and only looking for other people's offers is more for fun than profit.

With my job, I haven't had time over the past month to continue trading. However I will try my best to get a few more trades in during the school year. Keep watching this page for updates in the future

This is pretty neat, I did almost the exact same thing in Diablo 2 one year, started with an el rune and ended up with a mal or something after a toooooooooon of trades hehe. Definitely fun.