(intense music)
- I've traded when I was in middle school.
- I think I can get to a house in a week, why not?
- Let's go!
(energetic music)
We don't use bartering in our everyday society.
I walked up to these two nice gentlemen,
and I offered them the paperclip,
and they gave me a nice postcard,
which I thought was a fair and equal trade.
- She got a bigger paperclip!
Devon traded her paperclip for a postcard,
and I ended up going up to those same guys
and trading my paperclip for a bigger paperclip.
- I went into this being really realistic,
I was like "hey, it's a paperclip,
"so let's give me something comparable."
Whereas I feel like Alaska kinda went into it,
seeing like "what's the best thing I could get?"
- Got a sticker.
- A sticker?
It was two kids who were going to school
or coming back from school or something.
Hell yeah!
Would you be down to trade for a paperclip?
Hell yeah!
- Next logical step was to try to see
if I could get some kind of a gift card.
So I went up to this one guy.
Do you have like a FroYo gift card?
My plan was gonna get a little sticky.
(Devin laughs)
He tried to trade me a postcard for his hotel room key.
Lesson learned, there are weird people in Hollywood.
Then I found another guy on the street,
I knowingly traded my postcard for a gift card
that I knew was only worth 26 cents.
- You have something of value I could trade it for?
So I met this rapper,
traded him the Hell Yeah sticker for two dollars.
Yeah dude, yeah, couple bucks would work.
- I was wondering if I could trade for your knife.
I offered her the gift card and instead of the knife,
she gave me her wooden spoon
with her name tattooed to the edge of it,
which I thought was super cool.
- You're gonna remember me forever.
(Devon laughs)
- Devon's spoon was cool, I'll give her that,
but it's no match to what I have.
(dramatic music)
- I put up an ad on Craigslist to see who would bite.
The answer is: nobody in Los Angeles wants to trade
for a wooden spoon.
- It's harder than I thought to continue to trade up
as you get bigger and bigger things.
- I have not felt this rejected since 11th grade
when I had to ask someone else to prom.
- I think I'm doing really well in the competition.
- I ended up trading (stifled laughter) for this.
Hello?
- I was able to turn two dollars into five dollars.
For my five dollars,
I traded this unopened portable charging device.
I'm not gonna stop here, I'm gonna keep going.
- Ring ring ring ring, who is it?
Oh, it's victory.
(tense music)
- At the beginning of this, I was like,
way overly competitive, and just wanted to crush Devon.
- People look at their lives
and assess what they're willing to give up,
and the answer is very little.
- Motivation is at an all-time low.
How the fuck am I supposed to trade for this shit?
- Now I'm considering, what do people have on their person
that is worth 10 to 15 dollars,
that they'd want to trade for this thing?
- After seeing how hard all this is, I'm like,
me and Devon are kind of in this together,
(blissful music) let's just see
what cool things we can come up with together.
We ended up combining our items
and trading them for an experience
that we both wanted to do.
- Yeah!
- The guys selling these Hollywood tours
are always out there,
they're like "Hollywood tours! Hollywood tours!"
- Alaska and Devon.
- [Devon] Yes.
- Those are hard names to forget right there.
- Yeah.
We out hustled the hustler.
- Yeah!
- Oh shoot, you guys should go any time you want.
You can get the local California price,
it's no problem.
Put them on the tour and let 'em ride around.
- Yes let's do it!
- We might go on a ride!
I've actually lived here for five years
and I've never gone on a Hollywood tour.
- Yeah, neither have I.
- It's crazy to me that we,
that derived from a paperclip.
- Yeah. - It all came from one,
two, two paperclips.
- Paperclips are things you throw away,
and we turned it into this over 80 dollar experience
that people come to Hollywood to do,
that's truly remarkable.
- Mike, how much is this worth?
- 79 dollars.
- Alaska and I already made plans to go this weekend.
- Yes!
The takeaway for me from this whole experience, I guess,
money is just a representation of where we put value,
and I realized that we actually put too much value
on the paper bills.
- I would say friendship is the real prize.
- It was. Friendship was the real prize.
- Let's just, we're gonna hug it out.
- Hug it out!