March 10th: The End of Year One.

Here we are. It's been one full year since I first decided that I was willing to part with my precious little blue bead in hopes of bigger and better things for the sake of my non-profit, the Cultural Awareness Foundation. Although the final result of my trading adventure may not be on the same scale as the guy with the milliondollarwebsite, or Kyle's Oneredpaperclip, I believe I did rather well! Through 6 trades starting with one insignificant, tiny, little, blue bead I ended up with a gift certificate worth 600 dollars (American dollars too!) I will soon be attempting to sell the gift certificate and I will update the blog with the amount I will get for it and thus the final amount of money I will donate to my non-profit.

I guess that wraps everything up fairly nicely. My project is finished with myself personally having enjoyed 6 fun and interesting trades, my charity getting a nice little donation, and all of my traders getting something that they could really use. That's it for me, I'm happy with the final result and I'll pat myself on the back and return to my day job... Yep, everything really is wrapped up and done with little pink bows, and ribbons, with the i's dotted and p's q'ed (or whatever you do with p's nowadays) right...



Right?



WRONG! This is just the beginning! I learned a lot trading over the past year. I learned what items are good to trade for (such as digital cameras, tents, and Sock Monkeys!) and some that are not so desirable (It seems as though I got stuck on all the gift certificates.) and I believe I still have an incredible amount more to learn!

Besides, several times I came so close to making critical trades to take this project to another level. I narrowly missed a trade for a mobile home, a trailer camper, and even a Jeep Wagoneer! Unfortunately one was sold before I could get it, the other was given away, and the last had just stopped running. Yet, the potential was there!

I am more confident now then ever before that if I could simply do it all over again I could raise much, MUCH, more funds for my non-profit. After all this blog got OVER 1000 HITS during the course of my project. So people must be interested.

So, why not do it again!? Well, yeah why not! Why not do this every year until the project does make it to the next level!? After all we live in a world where Madonna is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... By that reasoning anything is possible!

So I will now announce for the first time that abluebead will now become an ANNUAL EVENT! That's right every year, year after year, I will begin trading again and see what the trading gods (err really demi-gods, I mean lets face it trading gods probably aren't that powerful on the God Power Scale, so we'll say demi-gods) have in store for me for that year. Maybe I'll end up trading my way to a Ferrari F-40! Or, maybe I'll trade my way to a (not as cool as a Ferrari) but still rad green bead... Who knows, stay tuned as I will be starting my SECOND ANNUAL A Blue Bead Free Trading Fundraiser in the coming weeks!

-Patrick K.