When I was a young kiddie and the apple of my mother's eye, I would spend part of my Saturday mornings watching Swap Shop on TV. Swap Shop was presented by British cheeky chappie Noel Edmonds and people would come on the show to swap their trading cards for a GI Joe, or their little brother in exchange for Yoda, and so on. Fast-forward twenty-five years and we now have more or less the same concept online.

NOTE: These sites are pre-dominantly US sites although it may be possible to register a non-US address. Check each site for details.

BookMooch - give away your books and get points in return. Use those points to ask for free books from other users. The more expensive / rare the book, the more points involved.

Tauschticket - a German language equivalent of BookMooch and a site that both my girlfriend and I use frequently. Highly recommended if you live in Germany.

File-Swap - I'm not sure if this one really fits in this category as you can't choose what you get. If you upload a file to the website, you can get a random file back. I suppose it's fun if you upload something that is not valuable.

Paperback Swap - another book swapping website, same as Bookmooch and Tauschticket.

Swaptree - a place to swap books, music, DVD's and video games.

SwitchPlanet - swap (or trade) used DVDs, CDs, Video Games and Books. They idea behind SwitchPlanet is to provide a quick way to trade stuff you have to get the stuff you want.

Itamos - swap your home when going on holiday. Why stay in a hotel or guest house when you can sit in someone's apartment instead while they sit in yours? Not one for me personally but I know other people who would love to do something like this.

BarterPalace - despite its name, BarterPalace allows users to either sell items or barter them. Still worth a look though. This one looks like exclusively USA listings only.

Trade Games Now - trade used computer games.

Do you have any favourite swap / barter sites that you want to share? Let us know about them in the comments!