I traded duplicates with the other boys, and circulating, as I did, all about town, I had greater opportunities for trading and acquiring.
It was not long before I had complete every series issued by every cigarette manufacturer--such as the Great Race Horses, Parisian Beauties, Women of All Nations, Flags of All Nations, Noted Actors, Champion Prize Fighters, etc.

And each series I had three different ways: in the card from the cigarette package, in the poster, and in the album.
Then I began to accumulate duplicate sets, duplicate albums.

I traded for other things that boys valued and which they usually bought with money given them by their parents.

Naturally, they did not have the keen sense of values that I had, who was never given money to buy anything.

I traded for postage-stamps, for minerals, for curios, for birds' eggs, for marbles (I had a more magnificent collection of agates than I have ever seen any boy possess--and the nucleus of the collection was a handful worth at least three dollars, which I had kept as security for twenty cents I loaned to a messenger-boy who was sent to reform school before he could redeem them).
I'd trade anything and everything for anything else, and turn it over in a dozen more trades until it was transmuted into something that was worth something.