Turn your Swap into a Treasure Hunt

Turn swapping into a fun game you can play with your kids

A few months back, my wife was out of town for the weekend. This left me on daddy duty 24/7. I honestly enjoy when this happens. I’m forced to put everything else aside and just focus solely on my kids.

So, here I am on a random weekend with 3 kids to entertain for a lot of hours. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is … a treasure hunt. Yep, I set out to create an interactive, several hour crazy-as-can-be treasure hunt. My kids absolutely loved it. It was one of the few times I have seen them play together without trying to kill one another. They were running from clue to clue, cheering each other on with each clue they found and at the end, couldn’t stop laughing and jumping around when they found the treasure.

I asked my kids what they liked best about the whole event.

I loved what they told me: They liked the anticipation of what came next (I’m paraphrasing). With every clue, they thought the next one would bring the treasure. They got more excited with each interaction. I could see it on their faces (I also captured it on camera).

It occurred to me that the same feeling happens when you swap. It’s a huge treasure hunt. You never know what value the things you own hold, until you try to swap it for something else. On our site, Swap.com, we tell you what you can swap a book, movie, CD, or video game for. This value is based on other members’ Haves and Wants.

It’s a treasure hunt.

Now, with Swap.com Mobile, the treasure hunt moves from exciting…to addicting. In fact, I created another treasure hunt for my kids a few weeks ago where they could only use Swap.com’s iPhone app to play. The goal was to find items in our house that were worth certain Swap values. I have shelves of media items that aren’t being used and haven’t made it to Swap.com yet. So, the stage was set.

My kids first had to guess what the value would be and then got prizes based on hitting certain Get Now levels. It took them 12 minutes to scan over 200 items. The highest value item would allow us to choose from over 110,000 items in return. The lowest, was zero.

It was surprising though to find out what had current value and what didn’t.

Once they were done scanning our items, they wanted to move on to their friends’ houses. I couldn’t let them do this of course, but it was incredible to see. My kids didn’t want to end this treasure hunt. It had concrete meaning for them. We’ve already had 15 swap offers with all our new Have items. My kids are already thinking about what else they can swap for.

Treasure hunts are fun…swapping is downright habit-forming. Try it and you will see what I mean.