People Explain The Black Markets at Their Schools

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Nov 6, 2021 3:00 PM EDT

It happened all the time. Some kid would start collecting walnuts that fell on school property, or a teacher would ban rubber bands, and all of a sudden there was a new schoolyard black market. It was a confusing, weird and stupid lesson in basic economics. For those aching for simpler times, here are the school memes for the mostly educated.

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  • 01
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - LupinThe8th 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago 20 & 48 More We did a weird assignment for a month where we ran a "society" for an hour each day in our classroom. People had little shops they ran from their desks, there were elected positions, laws you could be ticketed for breaking, etc. It was all run on fake money, of course. I got elected Chief of Police, and handed out tickets for stuff like chewing gum in class. But a combination of
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  • 02
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - The final week of this rolls around and there's an announcement. At the end, all your money will be tallied up, any debts or taxes you owe subtracted, and any kid who wound up with a positive amount gets a pizza party. Kids who are in the red have to write an assignment on how and why they screwed up. This electrifies the class. Missing out on a pizza party is a Big Damn Deal when you're 10, and well under half the class is currently
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  • 03
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - Not me though, I'd been receiving a salary as a cop, and after being fired I just used the money I had accumulated to set up shop and had no debts. Few in the class could say that, so I was sitting pretty. Soon I started receiving offers of real money on the playground for some of my fake money. You only needed to be one dollar over zero to "win", so I could spare plenty. Made $40 in actual cash; I think I charged $5 for a hundred fa
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  • 04
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - Lucky_Se7enX 3 days ago a S Our elementary school utilized "ice cream tickets." You got 1 if it was your birthday or if you did something that a teacher decided was "exemplary." People would pass them around asking for favors down the line. Some kid found the paper used to make the tickets and xeroxed multiple pages of the tickets. He became our kingpin and ruled for a couple years.
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  • 05
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - Lemmelaroo 3 days ago · edited 3 days ago A 2 2 26 & 11 More In early elementary school we had a market for mud. Different groups of kids would claim areas around the school as their mud pit and put their brand of mud in ziplock bags to be traded with other groups for different bags of mud. We were the clay mud group and I had about 3 kids in the muck scooping it into bags or running to the water fountain to get fresh water to make m
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  • 06
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - ChaoticMainframe 3 days ago This one girl forged apology letters if you brought her something one of your parents wrote. I never used her services myself, but we were (and still are) good friends, and I gotta say, she's talented as hell. I literally can't tell which one is mine after she copied something I wrote. Including signature. It's baffling.
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  • 07
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - gagrushenka 3 days ago S 3 This wasn't a weird one but a genius one for 4 A girl set up a little business out of a box of stationary, writing forged letters from parents. She had all different paper, pens and pencils of every kind, and could write in convincingly accurate tone for the content of the notes depending on which kid they were for. She used different styles of handwriting and different styles of punctuation and language to
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  • 08
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - HankPymp 3 days ago This happened in Los Angeles in the mid 80's. Student bus passes had to be purchased by the fifth day of the month or you were stuck having to pay daily. The date had passed so I found a guy in my high school willing to trade another student's pass which he had stolen. I traded a tangerine and half a pack of cigarettes for a copy of Penthouse. Then I traded that issue with a pizza from the cafeteria for the bus pa
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  • 09
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - GetOutOfTheWhey 3 days ago 2 4 S Bottlecaps I still dont get it but back in primary school, they were collecting bottlecaps for some kind of charity. Google it, it's still ongoing around the world. So what happened was everything was going well, the teacher got everyone excited about it and kids were collecting it en masse. Kids would go around raiding for it. From the trash. From their school lunches. From their homes even. A teache
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  • 10
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - caliban_ish420 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago Sharpened sticks When we learnt about caveman we decided that it would have been a great idea to create our own prehistoric clan, so we smashed rocks and used them to sharpen tree branches. Some of us where particularly keen on sharpening that started to use walls as grindstones, they were able to sharpen about 6 sticks in half an hour and started exchanging them for berries during recess
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  • 11
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - Let's talk about stage 3 of the madness. Theft. There was no Bank of BotCaps at our school. There was the donation box and there were your cubbies. Those who didnt want to lug their stash back home everyday left it in their cubbies and some kid decided to steal people's caps and from the donation box. The great theft of Class 3B. But it was probably for the best because overnight the madness subsided. The teacher ended the bottlecap
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  • 12
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - isramobile 3 days ago 34 E Our middle school tried to start a reward program. It turned out to be a fail of epic proportion. Wolf bucks; names after our mascot. They were mini sized dollars color coded by value. Green was $1, red was $5, blue was $10, and a gold wolf buck ( only accessible to the principal and assistant principal $50) - Now the school bought erasers, pencil, notebooks. You could only buy with wolf bucks 1 pencil : 1
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  • 13
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Smile - ccrunn3r4lif3 3 days ago 3 One of my friends sold Starburst from his locker. 10 cents for 2. If he liked you, you got two from the 'normal' bag. If he didn't like you, you got two from the bag that only had yellows.
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  • 14
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Product - jcw10489 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago 94 33 E 16 Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. This one kid would buy every single bag out of the vending machines and sell them for like double the cost
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  • 15
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - UCFandOCSC 3 days ago 2 e2 Mountain Dew and Pepsi had a contest where college names were printed on the inside of the bottle caps. If that school won the NCAA March madness tournament, you could send it in for the jersey of your choice from any school. Suddenly, a black market for caps with blue chip schools was born. I remember selling a Duke cap for $10, then turning around and buying 10 drinks from the vending machine.
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  • 16
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - aidan-fox 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago 2 Harry Potter books I went to a religious school where books that had magic or fantasy was banned. Parents of these kids were just as religious so kids couldn't get them from their parents. Mom didn't care and she let me buy a few for some friends and then more kids started requesting them. Charged double for what they were worth and the kids were more than happy to pay. Most popular requests
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  • 17
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Vertebrate - ospreysound 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago S I had a friend that used to bring a bunch of coke cans from home and then sell them for a dollar at lunch. Cheaper than the vending machine prices and so it became like a little business. He eventually saved up enough for a longboard.
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  • 18
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - JediDoge2 3 days ago Salt My school canteen doesnt have any salt with chips (or fries to Americans) and people used to sell salt packets. The most expensive offer i could find was 50 pence for a packet or 1 pound for three.
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  • 19
    black markets that people existed at people's schools - Font - Charge-Royal 3 days ago · edited 2 days ago 2 2 3 2 O I organized the black market. My school banned Pokemon Cards, so I made a new game with paper cards. I was drawing pretty well, so I folded an paper in 9, it made pieces approximately the size of a Pokémon Vard, and created a whole new game out of this. Sold boosters for 10 cents. Spend all my afternoons drawing cards for the school. Teachers eventually heard of it and couldn't ba
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