I last bartered in Moscow in 1982 - friend Feliks needed windshield wiper blades for his Dad's car, so we could drive out of town for a party. There were no Car Toys auto parts stores in the USSR back then, and precious few wiper blades apparently. Folks would remove them from their cars when going inside for the night, if they didn't they would probably be gone by the morning and end up on the market the next day. Which is where we went for our wiper blades - our neighborhood source had the blades, and wanted some apples, which we had. About 4 kilos of apples bought us a pair of lightly used wiper blades. Dollars might have been cheaper than apples, but we needed those for petrol, and vodka...

There's barter and then there's barter - no way would I trade guns and/or ammo to strangers or even friends of friends, its not worth it to me no matter what the exchange rate. Also, if I am a source of ammo in hard times, I'm the very kind of person I don't want to associate with, in hard times. If my brother needed some ammo then he can have some, no charge. I'm with Al, I don't foresee America going anywhere near a barter exchange economy.