The Intervening Years . . .

In the years that I was at school I did a vairety of different schemes that gained me my first valuable experience.

One of the schemes that I did, was counterfeit. I know now that it is illegal, but at the time Pokemon was a big thing and everyone had cards. They used to trade, fight over them, and play with them. My parents did not beleive in indulging in these fads so I never had any.  The amount of fights, tears and upset parents over this eventually caused them to get banned.

However, all the kids at school had them, played with them for quite a long time. I thought: "what if I made them? I could sell them much more cheaply!" So that is when I set out to do so. I used tracing paper and copied some of the most popular cards like Pikachu

Pikachu

 This didn't prove wildly successful, but as there were others in a similar position to me that didn't have any they bought them. I admit this was probably not the best thing to do, but I jumped on a band wagon and made some money. It was my first time I experienced a supply and demand problem, because to start with I couldn't make enough! 

However, just as quickly as the trend arrived, as I mentioned before it got banned. I was then stuck with a few of these counterfeits that I could do nothing with, so I binned them.

The next fad that I encountered was Beyblades. 

Once again, they were big. There was a massive increase in ownership of these toys, once again my parents refused to buy one because they were ridiculous pieces of plastic that didn't last. They were right as usual, but that didn't stop me wanting one. 

This time quite obviously, I could not counterfeit these; so what to do?

As they grew in popularity, and the "arenas" were released one of the kids used to bring one in every lunchtime, and there were tournaments held between groups of friends. I used to watch, not being able to participate.

It was then when a family friend/relation that I had never met before (Australian second cousins but I'm not sure) came and they brought presents for us. Guess what my dad's was?

A Beyblade. This meant that I could participate in the tournaments. But so far, there is no profit being made in this story. Now there is. I ran the tournaments and we placed bets.

I was winning all the time because I had a large, fake beyblade that obliterated all of the others due to its size! This meant that often I won the tournaments, earning me the prizes. This got me a mixture of money, and other toys of the time. However this success was short lived as I was "banned" by the other kids from playing because I kept winning. 

So, I have been making money for my entire school career. Even if it was through dubious methods. 

I think I will try and maintain weekly posts as these are quite long to do every other day.

Until next week,

Thanks for reading!