Let’s face it – if the economy ever really crashes or the grid goes down for good, we’re not going to be paying for things with Apple Pay or Visa cards. We’re going to be trading goods and services like our great-grandparents did during the Great Depression. And if you think bartering is just about swapping eggs for bacon, think again.
During the 1930s, Americans relied on a powerful set of practical skills and community-based trades to survive. These weren’t luxury skills, but real life skills. And with the way the world’s headed, I have a strong feeling we’re going to need them again – and soon.
Here are some of the most valuable Depression-era bartering skills that will be worth their weight in gold when the dollar starts to slide and the shelves start to empty.
17. Cobbling Together Tools & Repairs
Some folks call it “junkyard engineering,” but Depression-era folks were masters of repair. The skill wasn’t fancy engineering; it was practical problem-solving under pressure. When replacements aren’t available and cash is tight, the person who can keep equipment working becomes one of the most valuable assets in the community.
So, if you can repurpose old parts, wire together a solution, or make a broken tool work again – you’re the neighbor everyone needs.
16. Hygiene Products
During the Great Depression, soap truly was valuable because many rural families could no longer afford store-bought hygiene products.
The households of that era revived those same techniques: saving bacon grease and beef tallow, leaching lye from hardwood ashes, and boiling it into firm, long-lasting bars that could be used for bathing, laundry, and even cleaning wounds. Tooth powder was commonly made from baking soda and salt, and herbal salves were prepared with rendered fat and garden-grown herbs like calendula or comfrey.
Before widespread antibiotics, infections from minor cuts, poor sanitation, or contaminated clothing could turn serious. Regular handwashing, laundering work clothes, and cleaning tools reduced outbreaks of skin infections and intestinal illness, especially in households with many children.
I actually tried a few natural homemade recipes, and they were so easy to make that I don’t even understand why we keep buying them. Some of the recipes I tested can be found here, including:
- Natural Herbal Toothpaste
- Honey Oat Soap for Skin Rashes
- Antiseptic Balm
- Gum-Strengthening Mouthwash
- Natural Deodorant Stick
- Natural Herbal Sunscreen
What’s considered a hobby today was once seen as a practical, everyday part of life for our grandparents. Once you realize how simple and effective these basics can be, it changes the way you look at the products lining store shelves.
15. Map Reading & Local Navigation
Once GPS goes down, navigation becomes a skill that directly affects safety, trade, and survival.
Reading topographic maps, recognizing terrain features, tracking waterways, and understanding natural travel corridors allows you to move efficiently and avoid unnecessary risk.
People of the Great Depression used to travel for work or trade relied on paper maps, rail lines, and word-of-mouth directions, and those who understood the land often guided others for goods or favors.
Clear communication about routes, safe crossings, and resource locations builds trust, and in barter-based communities, trust and accurate information carry real value.
14. Firewood Cutting & Splitting
If you can safely fell trees, split and stack seasoned hardwood, and understand how to dry it properly, you’re offering something every household will eventually need. A rick of dry oak or hickory can trade for canned goods, fresh eggs, repairs, or other essentials because steady heat means warm rooms, boiled water, and cooked meals.
Also, knowing how to start and maintain a fire in poor conditions adds even more value. Dr. Nicole Apelian, a biologist, herbalist, and survival expert, shares a reliable method for starting a fire even in the rain. That knowledge becomes precious in a barter-based society where the ability to produce heat on demand can outweigh almost any small luxury.
13. Blacksmithing & Blade Sharpening
Knives, axes, and tools will always need sharpening or repairing. If you’ve got a grindstone and know how to use it, or can forge simple items, your skill will be in constant demand. This is one of those trades that never goes out of style.
12. Shoemaking & Leather Repair
People used to get their shoes resoled, not replaced. If you can fix boots, patch belts, or repurpose old leather, you’ve got a trade that lasts. Even knowing how to hand-stitch leather can get you meals and more in return. Durable footwear becomes priceless when stores close.
11. Basic Carpentry & Repair Work
Houses, fences, chicken coops, and barns all need fixing eventually. If you can swing a hammer, sharpen a saw, or build a simple shelter, you’ll be in demand. Back in the 30s, people traded carpentry work for food, firewood, or homegrown produce. The same will be true when people can’t afford a contractor.
So, I advise you to check out Ted’s 2000+ carpentry plans that can be explored in a weekend. Trust me, when the next crisis comes, you’ll regret not having these plans around.
10. Fermenting & Brewing
Homemade vinegar, sauerkraut, mead, beer, or wine were all common during the Depression because they served multiple purposes beyond simple enjoyment.
- Vinegar was used for pickling, cleaning, and even basic medicine.
- Sauerkraut provided vitamin C through winter when fresh produce was scarce.
- Alcoholic ferments like mead or fruit wine often held barter value because they required time and skill to produce safely.
- In many rural communities, a bottle of dandelion wine or a jug of homemade cider could trade for a chicken, extra firewood, or labor.
Fermentation also stretches harvests without refrigeration, preserves calories, and adds beneficial probiotics, making it one of the most practical food skills in any barter-based economy.
9. Candle Making
When the lights go out, candles become currency. Making beeswax or tallow candles from scratch is a skill that once lit nearly every home in America, and it will carry weight again when grids fail and nights stretch long.
Families will trade eggs, flour, or other staples for dependable light that helps them cook, mend, read, or simply feel secure after dark.
This candle recipe is worth keeping on hand before the next blackout hits:
8. Bartering & Negotiation Skills
This may sound obvious, yet it matters more than most people think: knowing how to strike a fair deal, negotiate with respect, and build lasting relationships is half the battle in any barter system. During the Depression, the most successful traders were the ones people trusted to be honest, fair, and consistent.
In hard times, your reputation becomes your currency.
If you want a real-world model for strong bartering skills, look at the Amish. They focus on producing tangible value through craftsmanship, farming, repair work, and practical trades that communities always need. Even in the way they handle money, they price fairly, avoid greed, stay disciplined and avoid unnecessary debt.
7. Knife Making & Tool Crafting
In the 1930s, many men made their own knives, axes, and farm tools from scrap steel because a sharp blade meant food, firewood, and steady work.
If you can forge and heat-treat a dependable cutting edge that holds up under daily use, you offer something people rely on constantly.
Well-made knives, hatchets, chisels, or splitting wedges trade easily for meat, produce, labor, or building materials.
Teaching others to shape and maintain their own tools increases your value even more and turns your skill into a steady bartering asset.
6. Midwifery & Birth Support
In rural communities, trained midwives delivered most babies. Hospitals were miles away and too expensive. If you can assist with safe deliveries or offer postpartum support, that’s definitely a priceless contribution.
5. Herbs and Seeds
Almost a century ago, people couldn’t always afford to see a doctor. Herbalists who knew how to make teas, tinctures, poultices, and salves were vital. If you know what plant to chew for a toothache or how to stop bleeding with yarrow, you’ll have people knocking on your door.
The best part is that nature has a remedy for almost everything, we just forgot how to use it.
Here are the ONLY medicinal seeds you need to create your own holistic pharmacy:
4. Water Collection & Filtration
People rarely think about clean water until the tap runs dry, yet safe drinking water becomes the top priority the moment systems fail. If you know how to collect rainwater properly using gutters and food-grade storage barrels, you already hold a valuable skill.
In a long-term crisis, tools that make purification easier increase your value even more. The Aqua Tower is a practical solution because it cleans water using layered filters and simple gravity, so it works without power or complicated parts. It removes sediment, many contaminants, and improves overall water quality in a simple design, that works indoors or outdoors.
3. Homesteading & Animal Care
If you can manage livestock confidently, you control a serious survival asset. Animals provide protein, dairy, breeding stock, and trade value, but only if they stay healthy and productive.
The valuable skills that will save you during a crisis are:
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Milking goats and cows correctly, without causing infection.
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Recognizing early signs of illness before it spreads.
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Treating minor wounds, parasites, and common infections.
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Assisting with births and caring for newborns.
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Handling animals calmly to prevent stress and injury.
If you want to learn more about animal care and homesteading, you should read the story of Ron and Johanna, the authors of Self Sufficient Backyard. You can learn a lot from their secrets and more than 40 years of off-grid living experience.
2. Butchering & Meat Preservation
In a crisis, being able to preserve meat means you control a high-value food source that can be stored, transported, and traded instead of wasted.
But in the past, meat preservation was common knowledge. People smoked, salted, and cured meat because they had no other choice, and those methods kept food from spoiling when fresh supplies were limited. Once freezers became normal, most of these skills disappeared, and today almost nobody knows how to store meat without electricity.
Luckily, we uncovered one of these old meat-preserving secrets, so you can use it too:
1. Gardening & Food Preservation
You cannot barter without surplus, and few things move faster than food that stores well and solves immediate needs. If you can grow it and preserve it safely, you create trade goods people will line up for. The most valuable items you can produce and store are:
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Pressure-canned beans that provide ready-to-eat protein and calories
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Pickled vegetables that add important nutrients to basic diets
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Dehydrated fruits and tomatoes that store compactly and rehydrate into meals
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Salsa and tomato sauce for families who cannot can safely themselves
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Dried herbs, garlic, and onions that upgrade bland staples
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Safely pressure-canned meat and properly stored grains that few people know how to handle
Let’s Not Forget About…
Every skill in this list matters when cash stops working, because skills and supplies become the new “money.” Yet the one thing people forget to plan for is health. You don’t realize how much your life leans on hospitals, pharmacies, and quick prescriptions until they’re overwhelmed, shut down, or simply out of reach.
Even if you live off-grid, real problems still happen: infections, injuries, blood sugar issues, heart trouble, pain that keeps you from working, and the kind of everyday sickness that becomes dangerous when help is far away. In a crisis, doctors will be priceless and scarce, which means you need a backup plan you can use at home with what you can grow, gather, or store.
You may also like:
Instant Foods You Need to Stockpile Before They Disappear
The ‘Superweed’ That Saved Large Communities During The Great Depression (VIDEO)
the masses will STARVE before they make any effort to learn skills as these.
Too many ignore the warnings and will wait to pound on your door to take them in.
Not happenin.
As long as the masses know who to blame… we will be just fine.
A real good way to make charcoal will be important. Most efficient and convenient way to cook, forge, lots more.
You will trade a LOT if you need medical, especially a midwife.
Many other things will be real important, seeds etc. Just dont trade away stock in prime breading years or most of your seeds. USE your file for them, dont trade away your tools.
Best to answer trade questions SLOWLY. you wont be used to the new situation your living in right away. every ITEM, IS YOUR LAST ONE, NO HARDWARE store to get a new one.
You’re absolutely right. Charcoal and medical skills would be worth a lot fast. But remember to protect your core supplies too – seeds, tools, breeding stock. Those are long-term survival, not trade goods. And taking your time before agreeing to a trade is smart, Kre.
Howdy from an undisclosed location high in the desert swamp,
Bartering is going to be area specific. I live around water so that won’t be used for barter. Access to it may be controlled by opportunistic butt heads. I asked a person recently to pause. Right now, this second, you have exactly what is in your house. There will not be going to any store. No gas stations and if there are they will be guarded. What have you got? I got a stare I hope I never see again. That stare was fear. If you are visiting this site, you are at least curious to what is all the hype?? There is the question on man made or natural disaster lasting long term. What is in your house? Stores are destroyed or over run. Ask yourself when is the last time you were hungry. Not it’s time to eat hunger. Hunger going on three days. Your really nice neighbor with the cute little kids are hungry too. What do you think the adults in that house are going to do to shut the crying kids up? That’s just one neighbor.
Bartering will happen when things have normalized. Whatever the new normal is. If you haven’t learned how to pressure can or dehydrate food? Now is a good time to learn and make the mistakes. When you don’t have to fight in or out of a mass gathering area whether store or Government food center, you will be doing yourself a huge favor. American history is the Depression of the 1930’s-40’s. People living in cardboard houses and glad to have that. This isn’t a dystopian thought. It’s actual American history. Start preparing for this type event now and not have to learn it under scary situations. People smell wood smoke. They will come investigate. If your canner is over a fire then, it’s too late. Get ready starting now to make it through the month or two of initial upheaval and fear. I’m not an alarmist. This has already happened in this Country. Recent North Carolina where help did not come and when people did try, they were turned away. Why? Doesn’t matter really. They were. I didn’t set out to do this, but I ended up bartering with people at garage sales. Not the sellers but the buyers. One man was walking away on his phone and he said “I just want a cast iron skillet and some tools.” I perked up. I asked him what does he have to trade me for a skillet? He looked surprised and said he didn’t know. He has stuff from other sales but was wanting a skillet. I offered to show him what I have to be an ice breaker. His eyes lit up. We walked to his plunder, and I told him I will trade the skillet for those two wool blankets. He couldn’t pull them out fast enough. He asked what would I want for the bow? I am actually going to use it so it was not on the table. I saw he had a bag full of coloring books. I asked what he was doing with these? He said taking to the dump. He stopped and realized he messed up. His, aw dang it! look was funny. I told him I am learning this too so how about some practice and let that oops slide? He said okay. I told him I have two wooden spoons I will trade for the coloring books. You can’t forget the kids in all the mess. Do not ever use steel on cast iron. He asked why so we had a crash course on cast iron. He had no idea. We have crossed paths again a couple times and still barter on the road. He asked me what I was looking for? I told him and he said this other location has those. Have you seen??? Yep. This spot. Friendly allies like this can be great. Since then, other people have seen us and haggled. We have agreed to meet at the city park with plunder just to barter. When? Haven’t set a date yet but garage sales will pick up here shortly.
Bartering is a skill I didn’t know a thing about.
Remember the Alamo
Remember Pearl Harbor
Remember 9/11
Remember North Carolina
Good grief… REMEMBER COVID LOCKDOWNS!
Remember to have your soul prepared.
Well, you’ve posted another good one… Hopefully, most of the folks on this site understand the uses of bartering… I’ve actually used it just like you did, at a garage sale, very similar situations, only up North in the DFW Metromess where there are literally hundreds of garage sales starting up come Spring and Summer… Now, I reside rurally, the closest/only city, in my AO, population 19,000, there aren’t quite as many garage sales… Luckily I signed up on a local site that listed garage sales both with in the city and rurally… I’ve actually seen signs crop up on county roads for garage sales and those are the good ones., PS, don’t forget .. Pretty sure everyone on this site hits garage sales frequently… I’ve got stuff I got at a garage sale that I may never use, but I thought I might, so I bought it, and now it’s perfect for barter material… Skills is another thing… and an important thing as this article mentions… If one would just try to learn a skill that that person needed, trial and error, is a great way to learn… I did, I’m no expert at anything, but I have the ability to do just about anything that needs to be done here in my AO… You can always find someone to do it for you, but before you do, try it yourself, you’d be surprised I’m sure… I do remember our history, (Alamo), and I even participated in some,(Nam), and for sure the scars don’t let me forget… and my Son was still in AIT when 911, and now my Grandson is in AIT, hopefully he won’t be bothered by another conflict, I pray…Soooo, I bid you a fond temporary farewell, Live Long and Prosper my friends…
Howdy right back at you.
That stare you described says it all. Most people don’t think past a full pantry and a working store down the road. Practicing skills and even bartering now, while things are calm, makes a lot of sense.
Appreciate you sharing the story. Stay ready out there.
Chaplin Dan, I always either learn something from your posts or ponder about things after reading them. Thank you for that.
I’ve done a bit of bartering with neighbors. It’s a good way to get to know them, and for you to develop a working relationship before a serious situation throws you together.
Examples, I scored some small apple rootstock trees at a plant sale. They were past the most desirable season for them, and giving them away in small bundles. The bundle was more than I could use. I shared some with an up-the-street who has an ancient apple tree. She thanked me for thinking of her, and gave me permission to get scions from the tree to try my hand at grafting.
Another woman nearby had an apple tree that bore extremely well one year. She allowed me to pick what I wanted because I had a long-handled picker that I could let her use.
We both ended up with more tasty apples because my long-handled picker could reach what neither of us could, and we shared recipes, too.
This article has some really interesting takes; looking back at Depression‑era bartering skills reminds us how valuable simple, practical abilities can be when times get tough. It’s a good reminder that adaptability and self‑reliance never really go out of style.