A swap meet that assembles itself
Six people, one park, everybody goes home with something. Nobody books a hall, prints a flyer or runs anything.
- Who would start one
- Anybody. There would be no organiser role.
- Who could join
- People whose items land in matching bands.
- Who would pick the place
- The group. Never Zwaptz.
How one would come together
Somebody starts it
You have a guitar you have stopped playing and you would like almost anything else. You would open it up rather than waiting for one person to want exactly your guitar.
People with matching items join
Anybody nearby whose thing sits in a compatible band could put it in. A bicycle wheel, three books, a small amplifier, a box of records, a camera.
The group agrees where and when
One public place, one afternoon. Zwaptz would suggest kinds of place and states what is true about them; the choice is the group’s.
Everyone turns up and swaps
Handovers would be confirmed by both sides of each exchange, the same way a two-person swap is.
Six people, one place
Six people. One park.
The reason this would work where a two-person swap sometimes does not is that six people have far more ways of matching up than two do. Your guitar does not have to become one specific thing. It has to become something, out of everything that turned up.
It is also just a better afternoon than meeting one stranger in a car park.
Indoors would work too
A hall on a Saturday morning is the same idea with a roof and somewhere to put a cup of tea.
What it would not do
It would not book the venue, chair the meeting, hold anybody’s property, or take a cut of what changes hands.
It would work out who could usefully be in the same room and write the first message. Everything after that is six people arranging an afternoon, which people have always been good at.
The advice for turning up to any of it is on meeting safely, and how a place gets suggested is on meeting places.