Crossing out the number was the actual decision
A price written in biro, struck through with one hard ruled line, and replaced with two words that take the object out of the money economy entirely.
Nothing on the cover. No title, no image, no name. Just one staple through a crooked scissor cut, and in the corner, two lines of biro.
50P, struck through with a single hard line. Beneath it, OR TRADE.
Why is the crossing out the important part?
Because a printed price can't be changed and a handwritten one can — and this one was, on purpose.
Striking a figure through doesn't erase it; it leaves the number visible underneath the line. That's
different from writing the new terms fresh. The crossed-out 50P stays legible, which means whoever
made this wanted the reader to see the decision being made, not just the outcome of it. A number was
considered, and then it was rejected.
What did trading actually cost?
More than the fifty pence it replaced, usually.
Money changes hands and the transaction is over. A trade asks for something specific in return — an
hour spent making a copy of your own thing, a walk to bring it in person, an object you'd otherwise
have kept. OR TRADE isn't a discount. It's a different price entirely, paid in time and material
rather than currency, and it's frequently the more expensive option for the person offering it.
What does the single staple and the crooked cut tell you?
That the production standard was whatever one person could manage with scissors and a stapler.
The edges aren't cut straight because nothing here was on a guillotine. One staple through the fold holds the whole thing together — not two, not a spine, one point of failure that was clearly good enough. Nothing about the object claims to be more finished than it is, and the pages inside were run off the same way: folded and stapled straight off a machine after everyone else had gone home.
Why is this pricing impossible on a platform that takes a cut?
Because a marketplace needs a number to process, and OR TRADE isn't one.
Every checkout flow assumes a currency amount moving one direction. A barter offer has no field for it — there's nothing to charge a percentage against, nothing a payment processor can settle. That's not a gap in the technology; it's the format doing something a transaction can't: setting a price that only works between two people who are actually in the room, or willing to post something back.
Does the trade have to be for another zine?
No — anything the maker actually wanted would do, including something sent by post.
A trade could be another booklet, a tape, a drawing, an object with no printed content at all, or the postage itself — the same stamp-and-envelope protocol used to receive a reply. The two words don't specify, which leaves the terms open to negotiation at the point of contact rather than fixed in advance.
Can I put my own price and my own terms on the cover?
Yes, and that's the whole point of doing it yourself rather than copying somebody's actual booklet.
A specific real object — a particular person's actual zine, its actual cover — belongs to whoever made it, and reproducing that exact object without asking is a different thing from making your own in the same format. The format itself, biro-struck price and all, isn't owned by anybody. Your own number, crossed out for your own reason, is the version that's actually yours — the same way a reader's comment added later in somebody else's copy belongs to whoever wrote it, not to the printed page it sits beside.
Does it print well?
Yes — it's two ink layers at most: the ruled strike-through and the handwritten words, on a plain ground.
Nothing here is fine detail. The strike-through line should stay a single hard stroke rather than a double or a scribble, since that's what reads as a deliberate edit rather than a mistake. Mustard, cream or another warm paper-adjacent ground suits the biro-on-stock look best, and the staple shadow and cut edge print as flat shapes, not textures that need fine resolution to hold up.
How do I get one made?
Describe the price at JustOG — the figure, what it's crossed out with, and what replaces it. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.
Designs other people have published are in the shop.
The fifty is still there, under the line. Nobody asked for it to be scrubbed out.