The art of the barter

MANILA, Philippines - Nope, the first cashless transaction wasn’t done with a Visa card, silly. It was through a barter system of exchange, whereby goods or services were exchanged for other goods or services — say, three hours of labor for a meal.

You are correct to assume that there are interesting gray areas in this kind of trading. After all, one man’s junk can be another’s gold. There are no absolute values.

A&E, through the Bio Channel program Barter Kings, follows the adventures of two established professional barterers. Debuting in the Philippines this month, the show stars Steve McHugh and Antonio Palazzola, best friends and business partners who have mastered the art of trading. They are “entrepreneurs who know to deal and get what they want without spending a dime. In other words, for these two men, no cash, no problem.”

Barter Kings promises to be a big and eventful ride as McHugh and Palazzola embark on various trading strings — an often laborious process where they systematically “trade up” from an initial item in hand to eventually get to their goal merchandise — as opposed to just one straight-up trade or barter.

When asked if it’s correct to say that, yes, they make money from the assumption that different people ascribe different values to the same item, and it’s but a matter of finding out which person would give the highest value to the item, Steve says: “I think you just said it better than anybody we’ve ever talked to. You’ve just summed up the trading experience for us.”

He continues: “It’s subjective; value means different things to different people.”

Steve and Antonio first met almost 20 years ago when the former was still a car salesman. “I sold Antonio a 4x4 truck. He was one of my first customers, and he has been a best friend since then,” shares McHugh, a Hesperia, California resident who turned to bartering to support his wife Cindy and two young boys.

Apple Valley, CA’s Antonio Palazzola has been in the bartering business since 1973 when he was eight years old. The first barter: A handful of plastic marbles for two large glass marbles. Those marbles are still in his possession, and Palazzola says they’re worth a few hundred dollars now.

His skill in valuation was helped in no small part by the fact that his father worked at a junkyard. “People would come into the shop and wanted to trade for stuff. I learned at a very young age to do trading. It always worked out to my advantage because I would get the better end of the deal and then I would cash out — sometimes a big cash out at the end,” he tells The STAR.

The friends teamed up for a couple of previous businesses, including construction, before deciding on bartering. Shares McHugh: “Through those ventures, we had inventory that was laying around everywhere that we couldn’t sell — a lot of it. We just decided through a couple of different adventures that people also had stuff they don’t or can’t sell that was laying around their houses.

“So, we asked people if they were willing to trade something that they had that they weren’t using for something that we had that we wanted to trade. Nine times out of 10, people said, ‘Heck, yeah. I need that and I’m not using this.’”

Seeing that bartering isn’t an exact science, how the partners get from here to there, make for, Bio proffers, compelling TV. Shares Steve: “Most of the time we disagree on everything, which makes it fun for us. A lot of the things I think are valuable Antonio doesn’t. A lot of things he thinks are valuable, I don’t. We actually laugh a lot together because we disagree a lot. It becomes a fun experience for us to prove each other wrong. The more we disagree, the funnier it becomes because it’s a competition between us. It’s almost like a joke — and we use that to motivate ourselves.”

Steve does acknowledge that they use online resources such as eBay and craigslist to start on baseline valuations and presumably sniff for leads, but they use gut instinct after that.

“We (also) know a lot of people through 25 years of being in the same area and different businesses,” McHugh insists. “We have around 3,000 contacts, and we e-mail partners, friends and family to gather information and solicit new trades.”

As for the most satisfying barter or trade they made, Antonio declares: “I was trying to barter up for a horse for my daughter. It was really difficult trying to get this special horse. I started with a walder and ended up with a painted, gilded horse.”

Steve, for his part, says it was for a red chopper motorcycle. “It was a laborious, challenging and sometimes suspenseful trade string because I got lost a few times.”

What wouldn’t they barter for anything?

Antonio says with a laugh: “We promised each other never to give cash for anything except our families. I’d probably never barter my kids, but everything else is barter.”

Although the two have never been to the Philippines, they maintain they’re game to do so. “We’d be more than happy to come out there, you betcha!” concluded Antonio.

Who knows? Perhaps a tasty barter or two in these parts may even be in the cards.

(Barter Kings premieres on Feb. 19, 10 p.m. on Bio channel. For details, visit www.biochannelasia.com or www.facebook.com/BioAsiaTV.)