Every generation seems to discover barter anew. A few companies are using the internet to work out the kinks of trading one thing for another with no cash. But for 73 years the readers of Yankee Magazine have been able to do the same for free, first on the pages of the New England institution and now on its website.

Jamie Trowbridge, the president of Yankee Magazine wrote in after our previous post on bartering. I talked to him about the "Yankee Swop," which I think must be the oldest barter forum in the country. Trowbridge's grandfather Robb Sagendorph started the swop shortly after he started the magazine. Trowbridge explained that his grandfather was annoyed that the local printer kept a jar of dentures out and kidded him with an ad: "Will swap one pair store teeth for a broom."

Much to everyone's amazement the ad got a response and soon the "swop" column was born. The magazine itself received the letters, then sent them on to the person who placed the ad. The only rule was that you couldn't swap for money -- that would just be buying, not swapping, and fit in the classified ads. "I'm sure that somewhere in a file drawer there's a policy, but we just use editorial judgment on the part of whoever is editing the column," says Trowbridge. "We didn't run stuff that appeared to be really inappropriate."

An editor of mine used to say that he could tell if someone was new to financial journalism because they would eventually suggest a story on barter as the next big thing. Luckily I'm blogging, not journalizing, now so I can mention Swaptree.com, which wants to be the Ebay or Amazon of people sending each other the junk they don't use anymore.

Swaptree is trying to be a true barter site. There are plenty of barter lite sites out there. There's Tradeaway.com, FrugalReader.com, and others that specialize in music. They mainly use some kind of point system (so it's just another version of currency) or charge per listing. Or both. There is the old fashioned Yankee Swop in Yankee Magazine, but it has the desperate quality of those personal ads looking for someone the writer saw on a train in the rain. You just can't believe the specific right person will read the ad and fulfill the wish. Will the guy who owns "Yankees memorabilia picture" really find an owner of a 1974 Buick LaSabre willing to trade? No, probably not. That's why we have currency.

Swaptree does aim to be a little different. You simply list a bunch of stuff you want and a bunch of stuff you want to get rid of. If any matches up--or even matches in a three-way triangle swap--you'll hear about it. But because there's no point system all your stuff is basically worth one point. You can't swap two cruddy paperbacks for one good hardcover; Swaptree can't handle that. You can only do one-for-one swaps. I put some items on there, but I think I'll still end up just stacking my old books in my building lobby to see if my neighbors want them.