買（买）mǎi

From left to write, it’s oracle bone script, seal script, traditional (regular) script, and simplified (regular) script.

The character “买”, to buy, was originally a combined ideogram, a picture of a fishing net and a cowrie shell.

Throughout the Shang dynasty and into the Zhou dynasty (3,000 years ago) cowrie shells were used as currency. They had to be collected along the southern coast, and so ‘netting cowrie shells’ was an easy metaphor for ‘monetary gain’.

網羅（网罗）wǎng luó originally meant ‘to catch with a net’ in the literal sense, but now is used mostly figuratively ‘to net’ or ‘to capture’ something of value (‘to grab a valued coworker for our team’ etc)

For a long time it meant trade in the general sense, both buying and selling, until the later introduction of the character “賣”（卖）mài, to sell.

(Not sure if this illustration works, but it’s supposed to be a memory aid: The ‘net’ in “買” looks like a boxy shopping basket (=purchasing goods), filled with cowrie shells (貝）