Found: YA Summer Camp Entrepreneur, Read 1980s

I read this in Canada back in the 80s. I forgot the title. I think it was "Son of (something)". I believe it was around 200 pages and had the following story:
A fairly shy boy arrives at summer camp. The camp recommends the parents leave him with some spending money. The parents are nervous about it but when they hear the small sum, they say something like "I guess $x will be all right". The leave the kid with that money and leave, worried. The kid makes one or two friends but rapidly starts doing unorthodox things to make money. For example, he rented a cow and ran a business to have people milk it for a small sum and keep what they milked. It was like a game and was very successful. After that, he did several other "businesses" using the money made to move from one venture to the next. I believe the last one was some kind of giant party, I believe it was in a pretzel factory where the pretzels were comming off hot and he made even more money from that. For the moment, I won't spoil the ending. It was a fun book, and in a curious way, inspiring. It was also probably the most unusual YA book I had ever read.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can solve this mystery :)

Oh, this was a favorite! I love Gordon Korman books. This one is definitely No Coins, Please. Though his best summer camp book in my opinion is I Want to Go Home. He does have a later book called Son of the Mob as well, but the plot and publication date are No Coins, Please.

>2 saskia17: Hi Saskia17, thank you so much. I'm certain you are correct. Now that I remember more from your mention of the title, I remember Artie would keep saying "...and, no coins please.". I will have to look into the author some more. I may not be a kid anymore, but they still might be fun to read.

Is there any chance you know of where I can pick up a reasonably priced copy? I'd prefer something digital (PDF, EPUB, Kindle) but even paper would be nice to have. Cheapest on Amazon is $60 USD which is a bit of a spicey meatball. :)

I wouldn't mind getting a look at I Want to Go Home either.

Thank you once again for taking the time to reply.

I found it (i think), and I wanted to add one more comment. First, it appears to be free to read on the Internet Archive (you need an account, and the preview says it is available with a free account. If it is there, I'll send them a donation as I also support Wikipedia). I also noticed it has an entry on Wikipedia as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Coins,_Please

First here's the Internet Archive link for it.
https://archive.org/details/nocoinsplease0000korm/mode/2up

And a Good Reads Link:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24057
In that link is the following, which I found a bit of interesting history: "Korman wrote his first book, "This Can't be Happening at Macdonald Hall", when he was 12 years old, for a coach who suddenly found himself teaching 7th grade English. He later took that episode and created a book out of it, as well, in "The Sixth Grade Nickname Game", wherein Mr. Huge was based on that 7th grade teacher."

Turns out I also read most if not all of his "This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall" which is a series of 7 books.

The "Son of..." book I mentioned above is the wrong title, but turns out it is another book I read by this same author, which was called "Son of Interflux".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Interflux

Funny how many of this author's books I read, but didn't remember who wrote them.

Thanks again, hope this was at least a bit useful/interesting for you or anyone else who wants to find this Author's works.

Wonderful! I'm glad to remind you of them.

Books are free to borrow on openlibrary.org
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL29658A/Gordon_Korman?mode=ebooks
And easy to filter by ebooks only as seen here for Gordon Korman. Same source, internet archive.
Most appear to be ex-library book scans of varying quality. You can read on the website, and some have the option of borrow for 14 days, in which case you can download an ePub or PDF file. I use Bluefire Reader to open the file from Files on a tablet but there are any number of apps you could use, and the site suggests one.
For print books try
bookfinder.com searches multiple sites
Abebooks.com
Your public library including interlibrary loan options.
Secondhand bookshops or charity/op shops.
Hope that helps. And absolutely! I have a few Gordon Korman books I've read that I never knew of nor had access to as a kid. Read what interests you!

Thanks very much bookel and saskia17! It was great to get all of that detailed information. Very kind of you!