Half of the students will have cash slips, half will have vendor items Keep one student out to be the Assayer (banker)-must be able to do math well Announce to the class that half of them will be gold diggers and half will be responsible for selling merchandise to the gold diggers:

Envelopes that have money slips tell the students how much they have, make these random amounts-some were more successful than others in the gold fields-instructor will exchange money slips for pennies. Picture envelopes have pictures of the items that will be for sale along with vendor instructions. Each vendor sells only one item

Explain to the students that there is a shortage of everything due to the large number of people coming into the gold fields. Story: Some vendors took water jugs out to the Sierra Nevadas to catch travelers at the tail end of their trip. Would be prospectors were so thirsty they paid up to $ for a glass of water.

Students are issued up to 100 gold nuggets (pennies) that can be exchanged at the Assayers office (bank) for cash that can then be used at the vendors. No more than 10% of gold nuggets can be exchanged at any given time. (Must show pay slip to banker) Every few minutes the teacher will increase or decrease the value of the gold nuggets, caution the students that the assayer could cheat them and not give them a fair rate of exchange(see attached signage).

Vendors are free to charge whatever they want for their product. They will meet together as a team and decide a fair price for their products but once they set up their own store they are on their own to do whatever they want with the price of their product. Allow for open commerce to occur for about 10 minutes (a timer is a good idea) while constantly changing the value of the gold. As students purchase items they are to collect them in their envelopes, keeping in mind that they want to get an A.

Buy 6 items = A Buy 5 items = B Buy 4 items = C Buy 3 items = D

Recognize that bartering may happen on the open trading floor (if they have been paying attention in class)-award bonus points the first few times you see this behavior.