Weird Currency: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==

* Demons in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' use kittens as currency.

* In ''[[The Golden Girls]],'' Sophia tells a story about her first job in Sicily. The story came up because her first paycheck, a brightly painted rock, was found under Dorothy's bed.

** Elves (at least in Cormanthyr) used yulthaari - "coins" (actually IOU notes / contract proposals) shaped as 5 inches long platinum tubes, with smooth outside surface and inside covered in tactile script. These were commonly used in auctions or among the nobility. This design ensures that [[Silent Offer|it's impossible to read anything from the outside]] even with eagle's eyes, thus allows to avoid both boastful use of wealth (which would be crass) and embarrassment (if you lose the bid). A third party will only see that one elf passed a yulthaari to the other, who stuck a finger in it and accepted or rejected - how much was offered and even for which goods the first was bidding is up to the rumours.

 

* In ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'', the currency is meat, which [[Justified Trope|justifies]] its use of [[Money Spider]].

* ''[[Fallout]]'' uses bottle caps. They started out as literal caps off of bottles, but eventually evolved into normal money.

* Yap (an island in the South Pacific) used carved wheel-like stones from another island as high-value "coin", called "Rai". Because individual stones could be over two meters across,they attracted much curiosity and some misinterpretations (summarized [http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/01/yap-stones-and-myth-of-fiat-money.html here]). For everyday uses, they had more convenient goods - pearl shells, pearl shell bead necklaces, ceremonial pestles and woven mats.

* A currency shortage in pre-revolution North America <ref>It was illegal for British gold and silver coinage to be exported to the colonies, to the point they paid government employees with foreign Spanish currency, which was not restricted.</ref> resulted in implementation of a tobacco standard by Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. Farmers would deliver their crop to a government warehouse, and in exchange would receive tobacco notes, which could be redeemed for the same amount of tobacco or traded as though they were that weight of tobacco. As they represented a renewable good subject to market trends, the value of these certificates was relatively unstable.