Is it time for MetaFilter consignment?

June 13, 2008 6:23 AM

I know a MetaFilter swapsite or Craigslist-y thing has been suggested before, but now that I have a thing burning a hole in my pocket that I'd like to give to an interested local Mefite -- like, today -- I'm wondering if it's time. I'd like to sell or give away things to you, and I'd like to buy stuff, too. I'm pretty sure that we could do some really interesting things with this, like what Miko did with her $9 something offer.
posted by Plutor to MetaFilter-related at 6:23 AM (81 comments total)

I'm local, and it's my birthday.

I like things that can burn holes in other things.
posted by Eideteker at 6:31 AM on June 13, 2008

Would someone like to swap this ruffled feeling of hungover ennui for, say, a box of Krispy Kremes?
posted by Jofus at 6:36 AM on June 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

How do you feel about teenagers?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:42 AM on June 13, 2008

I'd sure as hell give this a try if we implemented it, though I wonder if we're dense enough in most of the country (actually, world, come to think of it) for it to be useful to many.

I'd like to find out though.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:47 AM on June 13, 2008

How do you feel about the wiki?
posted by jessamyn at 6:47 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a thing burning a hole in my pocket that I'd like to give to an interested local Mefite -- like, today -- I'm wondering if it's time.

Christ, not again with the dating site requests.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:02 AM on June 13, 2008 [22 favorites]

It was suggested three times before. It was shot down three times before. But you thought it was worth it to suggest it again?

Hope really does spring eternal.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:24 AM on June 13, 2008

All they can do is say no.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:27 AM on June 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

In the unlikely story that is Metafilter, there has never been anything false about hope.
posted by cashman at 7:28 AM on June 13, 2008

Well, on the bright side, at least they can't suggest you use greasemonkey for this idea. Then again, I'm pretty sure Plutor can do anything with greasemonkey.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:31 AM on June 13, 2008

I've got a set of four-finger Deore XT brake levers that I'd like to trade for an IDE-to-CF adapter, and I'm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Email's in my profile.
posted by box at 7:47 AM on June 13, 2008

Is that a thing burning a hole in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:50 AM on June 13, 2008

Miko may have heard The Something Store story on NPR.
posted by Daddy-O at 7:50 AM on June 13, 2008

Or maybe she posted in the Something Store thread.
posted by cashman at 7:54 AM on June 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

Dave Faris: "It was shot down three times before."

It was?
posted by Plutor at 7:55 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a button that I am willing to trade for a shiny penny.

Dull pennies accepted at 2:1 trade
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:24 AM on June 13, 2008

You know what would be better is to fold this into meetups, where you bring crap and do a yankee swap or some such. Because i don't see this site doing anything swappy or sellish any better than Craiglist already does it, off a much larger user base.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:45 AM on June 13, 2008

Today, I get to decide what stays and what goes.
posted by Eideteker at 8:45 AM on June 13, 2008

I have two old ceiling fans, a heavy metal desk, and about a yard full of various-sized rocks. Whoever wants them can come get them. I'm not lugging them to a meet-up.
posted by bondcliff at 8:47 AM on June 13, 2008

Do. Not. Want.
posted by Dizzy at 8:50 AM on June 13, 2008

Something like this would be a great way for me to finally unload all those internal organs I've been stockpiling. You wouldn't think they would take up so much space, but three closets later, I've come to realize that it is possible to have too many spare spleens.


I've become less of a fan of craigslist of late, and I would actually use a mefi variant. At least here you wouldn't be dealing with a complete stranger, just a mostly stranger.
posted by quin at 9:10 AM on June 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

I think it would be fun. You wouldn't have to use it if you didn't want to. The wiki area would be a fine place, I suppose, or even a separate site, announced in projects and here.

I also like the Yankee Swap/meetup idea.

Swapping random stuff is fun. It'll help us all get ready for the post-industrial, post-peak-oil existence of trading and scavenging.
posted by Miko at 9:13 AM on June 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's not Red Sox tickets, right?
posted by horsemuth at 9:27 AM on June 13, 2008

Wow, I was just thinking about this today, because I have a load of random stuff that I want to sell this summer, but I don't want to go through Craigslist or eBay (scammers) and the stuff is too valuable for a garage sale (plus we live in the sticks). I <3 this idea.
posted by desjardins at 9:45 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a PowerMac 5500/275. It's running OS 9 and I've stuck 128mb of RAM and a network card in it. It's one of the first black macs, and the TV tuner still works a treat. I'll swap it for an evening with my future wife.

I'm in England's fashionable London.
posted by armoured-ant at 9:46 AM on June 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

And how has this been shot down three times already? Matt said:

This is something I'd like to do someday
posted by desjardins at 9:49 AM on June 13, 2008

I call the heavy metal desk! My Judas Priest credenza was recently damaged in a fire.
posted by Mister_A at 9:51 AM on June 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

I'd be so up for a mefi swap. I have a baby grand piano I'd like to get rid of but I don't want RandomFlakeyCraiglister trying to roll it out of my house balanced on a skateboard.
posted by jamaro at 10:12 AM on June 13, 2008

Any jewelry making/bead stringing/shiny-things-hoarding MeFi members can MeMail me if they'd like to swap little bits of supplies
posted by ersatzkat at 10:19 AM on June 13, 2008

I'll swap England's fashionable London for a picture of two kittens in a beermug. Won't they be surprised when they fly into Heathrow!
posted by Sparx at 10:20 AM on June 13, 2008

I like this. I'd do it.

Frankly, it's not all that different from the recent/ongoing music swap. So there.
posted by SlyBevel at 10:26 AM on June 13, 2008

Is there an ongoing CD swap? Because if not we should do a new one.
posted by quin at 10:34 AM on June 13, 2008

> I have a button that I am willing to trade for a shiny penny.

Canadian or American? 'Cause I don't want no Canadian buttons.
posted by ardgedee at 10:36 AM on June 13, 2008

horsemuth: "It's not Red Sox tickets, right?"

It was REM tickets for tonight's show at the former Tweeter Center. My brother has since found a co-worker who's taking them, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a good idea.
posted by Plutor at 10:38 AM on June 13, 2008

I am totally replacing my oil furnace with an electric furnace so if anyone close to Sherbrooke, Quebec wants a 500-gallon heating oil tank (2/3 full) I will trade for Amazing Spider-Man comics or maybe a lot of Smarties.
posted by Shepherd at 11:03 AM on June 13, 2008

Is there anyone in or near Baltimore who would like, and would be willing to haul, an old and beat-up but still functioning electric treadmill?
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a lit candle in my pocket.
posted by cortex at 11:11 AM on June 13, 2008

I think you're just happy to see Faint of Butt.
posted by BeerFilter at 11:18 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a lit candle in my pocket.

And I've got a firecracker in mine. For safety's sake, I'm staying away from you.
posted by inigo2 at 11:18 AM on June 13, 2008

I have a lit candle in my pocket.

I thought he was glad to see me :(
posted by nanojath at 11:22 AM on June 13, 2008

I like this idea, and would be happy to see it happen. I bet it will turn out to work really well for certain things (involving either trust or nerdiness) and less well for others (partially full oil tanks come to mind).
posted by Forktine at 11:22 AM on June 13, 2008

I will trade some of my unflagging enthusiasm for a sense of purpose that doesn't involve the internet.
posted by jessamyn at 11:36 AM on June 13, 2008 [7 favorites]

Faint of Butt ... Freecycle.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2008

I will trade some of my unflagging enthusiasm for a sense of purpose that doesn't involve the internet.

If someone will volunteer to do my laundry and dishes, I promise to put the recaptured time into recording music.
posted by cortex at 11:48 AM on June 13, 2008

Laundry? Can't you just drink vodka until your clothes don't smell anymore?
posted by box at 12:19 PM on June 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

"Any jewelry making/bead stringing/shiny-things-hoarding MeFi members can MeMail me if they'd like to swap little bits of supplies
posted by ersatzkat at 10:19 AM on June 13 [+] [!] "
That is scary! I could never part with my preciouses!
posted by Cranberry at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2008

Cranberry, I've learned that if I release the preciouses into the Universe, the Universe will provide! (glass, semi-precious, agates, jaspers, some funky old Tibetan silver - teeny-tiny all the way up to Wilma Flintstone rocks - how can you say no to the mystery of someone else's stash?)
posted by ersatzkat at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2008

I suggested this a while ago and everybody hated it for some reason.

(shrug)
posted by Afroblanco at 12:48 PM on June 13, 2008

I have the following items available for sale, trade, or barter:

feelings of fear, hate, spite, envy, sorrow (all are well used)

sore muscles

multiple headaches

lost love

paranoia

several assorted corpses

I'm looking for any of the following in return:

feelings of happiness, satisfaction, and love

that peaceful easy feeling

quiet moments of shared joy

a slurpee

posted by blue_beetle at 12:49 PM on June 13, 2008

Oh, and I have a jumbo sized container of loneliness. If no one calls about it, I'm leaving it out on the curb for the garbage man on tuesday.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:50 PM on June 13, 2008

quin - any functioning pancreases hiding out in your closet? I have a couple pinkie toes for trade. I've found they're quite useless and can be painful ..uh.. cute and ..uh.. take up less room.
posted by deborah at 12:54 PM on June 13, 2008

FYI : The culmination of the Mefi Hipsterific button/sticker swap is going to happen any day now. No reason why people couldn't set up more of these, with more diverse items.
posted by Dave Faris at 12:54 PM on June 13, 2008

And, now that I think of it, my wife is about to participate in a local nail-polish swap this weekend with people she met through a make-up oriented message board. Seems to me, local things like this would work better.
posted by Dave Faris at 12:56 PM on June 13, 2008

I suggested this a while ago and everybody hated it for some reason.

(shrug)

Haven't you seen that blog "White Things Metafilter Hates"? You were entry 17.
posted by inigo2 at 12:58 PM on June 13, 2008

Oh, and I have a jumbo sized container of loneliness. If no one calls about it, I'm leaving it out on the curb for the garbage man on tuesday.

You should spread it on the lawn, so it'll cut itself.
posted by inigo2 at 12:59 PM on June 13, 2008 [6 favorites]

I have an entire lawn of dead grass that's getting in the way of my drought-friendly plantings. Anyone want it? You just have to pull it out and take it away.
posted by davejay at 1:21 PM on June 13, 2008

Sorry deborah, I traded them in that last 'Land for Glands' telethon. I got an three and a half acres of prime swamp land for a pound of barely used meat.

You may want to talk to blue_beetle. I think he said something about spare corpses.
posted by quin at 1:24 PM on June 13, 2008

I only need a hug.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:25 PM on June 13, 2008

I have 6 heavy boxes of mostly Science Fiction hardcovers.
Second hand bookstores (in Montreal) buy only SF paperbacks.
I don't want the hassle to sell them one by one.
I can't ship them to my friends (too expensive).
Any idea?
posted by bru at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2008

Sewer horse is watching you do dumb shit.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:42 PM on June 13, 2008

I'll trade some cabbage for some bok choy.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 2:11 PM on June 13, 2008

I have a PowerMac 5500/275. It's running OS 9 and I've stuck 128mb of RAM and a network card in it. It's one of the first black macs, and the TV tuner still works a treat. I'll swap it for an evening with my future wife.

Wait, for an obsolete computer, we have to sleep with your fiancé? That sounds like a Japanese game show.
posted by klangklangston at 2:21 PM on June 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

(Fiancée, rather. I hate gendered nouns.)
posted by klangklangston at 2:22 PM on June 13, 2008

And I used to do local mix cd swaps in Ann Arbor, and found that worked much better than mailing things off.
posted by klangklangston at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2008

I will write a comic opera complete with overture in exchange for musical accompaniment. I'll still swap the entirety of London for a picture of two kittens in a beer mug and I am unsure which transaction will make me more famous.
posted by Sparx at 2:27 PM on June 13, 2008

I'll trade some cabbage for some bok choy.

I have six baby bok choys from the CSA that we didn;t get around to eating this week. I'll give them to you if you promise NOT to give me any cabbage.
posted by dersins at 2:29 PM on June 13, 2008

Sadly, my kittens are tea-totalers.*

*or possibly tee totalers or teetotalers. we never solved that argument.
posted by misha at 2:35 PM on June 13, 2008

I'm sort of embarrassed to be for this idea, but I'd totally use it. I have stuff sitting around that I'm too lazy to sell, is too useful to trash, but I'm never going to use or fix it. I suspect PDX is plenty populous enough to support the local idea. If only it existed, I would have held on to my 30" Fresnel lens for a local person sharing Eideteker's interests. That sumbitch (erm, the lens) could light asphalt on fire in seconds on a sunny day.
posted by cairnish at 2:37 PM on June 13, 2008

Portland, Ore., Freecycle group has 29,511 participants.
posted by Dave Faris at 2:48 PM on June 13, 2008

Oh yes! I have a thirteen-year-old male human that I grew from a seed. I need a new futon frame. Any takers?

I like the idea.
posted by not_on_display at 3:11 PM on June 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

Indeed I've used freecycle. Ebay and Craigslist also exist. They are all some sort of filter, and a community of sorts, I guess. MetaFilter is another sort of filter. Not sure that fact has or should have anything to do with recirculating stuff, which is why I'm ambivalent about the idea. (But would almost certainly try it.)
posted by cairnish at 3:15 PM on June 13, 2008

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...
posted by loiseau at 4:13 PM on June 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

I have a thirteen-year-old male human that I grew from a seed. I need a new futon frame. Any takers?

I'll swap you, but only if I don't have to deliver.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:09 PM on June 13, 2008

I got wood for sheep. Anyone?
posted by ikahime at 10:07 PM on June 13, 2008

*send virtual hugs to Ambrosia Voyeur and blue_beetle. Strives mightily, but is overcome with possessiveness, cannot swap preciouses with ersatzkat*
posted by Cranberry at 11:26 PM on June 13, 2008

An abstentious child would be a teetoddler?
posted by klangklangston at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2008

I will trade some of my unflagging enthusiasm....

You mean you guys have to go through and unflag everything in the flag queue? I'm glad you enjoy it, it sounds kind of tedious to me.
posted by sleevener at 9:58 AM on June 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

bru: I have 6 heavy boxes of mostly Science Fiction hardcovers.
Second hand bookstores (in Montreal) buy only SF paperbacks.
I don't want the hassle to sell them one by one.
I can't ship them to my friends (too expensive).
Any idea?

I have one idea:

* Bulk receiving of books: if you have boxes of books and do not want to bother entering them into BookMooch, Better World Books will accept whatever books you postal mail to them in whatever quantity you want, and pay you in book mooch points.

So, yeah, you'll still have to ship them, but at least you'll get points to mooch other books.
posted by philomathoholic at 12:50 PM on June 14, 2008

You mean you guys have to go through and unflag everything in the flag queue?

Actually yeah we pretty much do. We can do it in bulk though. We see the "top flagged" stuff first, so if there's some shitstorm that generated like 20 flags, we can remove them all at once.
posted by jessamyn at 6:55 PM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wow, my pun came true!
posted by sleevener at 6:22 AM on June 16, 2008

Afro: I was for it!

I would love this feature even more if it also had a spot for non-Freecycle-style transactions.

Example:

• Do you have a copy of May 2008 Harvard Business Review? How about a copy of the US issue of the Economist for the last week of Feb 2008? I'd pay to take them off your hands.
• Are you flying through O'Hare in the next week? I've hidden two drink chits in the magazine rack near the northern luggage closet of the Admirals Club in Terminal 3.
• Have you ever taken a photograph of [blah]? I need one for a design project and can't find it at [Flickr, iStock, etc], so will happily talk to a MeFite about a license.
• I need a box of Cherry Mash, please help!

(That sort of thing. Bulletin-board-style.) These are just whipped-up examples (well, except for the first one -- seriously, pls MeMail me) of the kinds of things that I regularly wish I could resource here, but whatever reason are never right for Jobs, AskMe, MeTa, etc. As quin pointed out upthread, yes we're still dealing with internet strangers... but, less strange.

I don't expect MeFi to replace Craigslist or eBay. But I do think that we would find some nice benefit in having a public bulletin board.

If it turns out that this is something better suited to Meetups, I'll accept that. But as someone who doesn't get to go to Meetups, the acceptance would be grudging.

Or if it turns out this is not right as a MeFi subsite, but if someone were inclined to do this for Projects, I would kick you ten bucks to get started.
posted by pineapple at 7:50 AM on June 16, 2008 [2 favorites]