Okay, not immediately. The man - Kyle MacDonald - traded up from the paperclip gradually, making a small profit on each trade, until receiving the keys to a 1920s farmhouse in the small town of Kipling. It looks as if he was helped at the very end by the town itself, which realised it could gain from the publicity. Still - a property's a property, and it took just 14 trades and one year to get from paperclip to house.

[via First Rung]