TOPIC: A big Thanks! to those who traded with my boys...

I want to say a big "Thanks!" to all the token traders who traded with my boys, Alex and Nick.  They were the two blonde headed boys - one was 10 years old and the other was 8 years old - running around conning all the token traders out of their stuff.    I do know that they had some tokens that were highly collectible - like they had several platinums, tokens required for the combo tokens, and tokens worth GP, and I was encouraging them to trade those, so hopefully some of you got good deals. Trading tokens was the highlight of GenCon for them and now they are hooked!  Your generosity and kindness to them was really appreciated by me.  Hopefully you also enjoyed the joy you brought into their lives as well.  They are well on their way to being tokenaholics and are still talking about tokens.  You all rule!<br />

They were pretty darn adorable.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />...I'm such a sucker for kids.

Besides, they are the next generation of TDers.  I'm glad they had fun.

Paul (someone I met on a run) and I had fun that one late night at the table.  We were certainly glad the boys were happy.<br /><br />8-year old boy:  Let me see what you've got.  Hey!  I want that greatsword.<br />Me:  I'm not sure I want to part with it.<br />8-year old boy:  What character class do you play?<br />Me:  Wizard<br />8-year old boy:  You don't need a greatsword for a wizard.  Here, I'll give you these (plunks down three tokens).<br /><br />Lol.  Shrewd traders. 

Back in 1993 I was on the staff at the National Boy Scout Jamboree and they had a strict policy that adults were not allowed to trade with the scouts unless the scouts had an adult with them.  The official reason was to protect the scouts from getting ripped off.  However, after watching some of the scouts trading pins and patches I was quickly and completely convinced that the rule was to protect the adults!  Those kids were hustlers like you wouldn't believe!  I could easily see most of them doing three-card monty on the streets of some big city.  Since then I have made it a point to never trade with small children as I would be afraid that they'd con me out of not only whatever it is that I had to trade but probably my wallet as well!<br /><br />I saw your kids in action, jtillots, and I instantly knew that they'd out trade me for anything that I had.  On Saturday I was borrowing some coinage from a friend of mine and one of you sons just seemed to appear out of nowhere with a handful of gold asking me what I had to trade for his gold coins.  Sadly, at the time I had nothing to trade.  Your son seemed a bit disappointed, but before I could even apologize he was off looking to trade with someone else.  I think that if you took your sons to a major sporting venue and gave them a handful of monopoly money that you'd wind up with 4 box seats in less than 15 minutes!<br /><br /><br />Take care and have a great day....<br /><br /><br /><br />ciao,<br />john.

I was in Russia in 1989 (turned 21 in RED SQUARE!). As it was a school trip, we were told to bring gum and hard candy for the kids who would trade school badges and pins...well I really wanted to hook the kids up so I brought 2x5 pound bags of bazooka gum (turned out to be the FAV over there)...<br /><br />Anyway - at a tourist stop, we get out and I see this pack of kids...well, the top dog kid comes over to me and says GOOM which I think is actual russian for gum, either that or I just heard accent.  So out he pulls a 7x7 piece of cloth with dozens of pins neatly pinned to it.  I draw second, and reach into my largest pocket to produce a hand full of Bazookas!  The kid took one look at that hand full - took one look at his cloth, folded it up and we did a hand for hand trade...without any hesitation!  I think we were both very happy with the trade!<br /><br />I made it home with so many pins I asked my dad to make a wall display case to put them all in...I'll try to photo and post...

That's a great story, Gary!<br /><br />And yeah, jtillots, your kids were pretty cool to trade with! They tried really, really hard to convince me to trade my +1 Orcish Flail for their Common Orcish Flail. While I didn't go for that one, I was very happy with later (adult supervised) trades I made with them.

Yeah, Raven, although I didn't feel like I needed to supervise them (except to save the adults from my children's cons), I did try to point out where they could make decent trades and get the things they wanted - like the pendant I encouraged them to trade with you.  Hopefully they will continue to learn about fair trades versus stealing the other person's shirt.

You know your kids had a plus in their favor don't you?  Who could say "no" to someone so cute?