Discovered in China 5,000 years ago, tea served as a means of consumption and payment. Dried from tea leaves, crushed, sifted, steamed, and pressed into shape, tea bricks symbolized wealth and social status. The edible currency was embossed with patterns that provided information about weight, quality, and value. Last century, a Tibetan could buy 8 ducks with a typical 300-gram standard brick.
In the turbulent post-World War I era, when inflation was soaring in Germany, many cities resorted to unusual measures to overcome the shortage of money. One creative solution was the Bielefeld Savings Bank’s cloth money, made of silk, velvet, and linen. Each piece was a small work of art with elaborate borders. “If we have to have emergency money, let’s have it in style,” thought the bank’s managers when they began issuing it in mid-July 1921.
The Kissi penny was a trading currency in West Africa until the 1980s. It was made from iron, a valuable material there, and each stick was unique, making it difficult to forge. If it broke, it was considered worthless until a shaman restored it in a religious ceremony. This “money with a soul” also played a spiritual role in marriages. The bride price amounted to around 4,000 pennies in 200 bundles.
The game of cards came to Europe from China 600 years ago. It is associated with luck, brains, strategy, and fun, but also with vice and money. A shortage of money, due to people gambling away their fortune at the table, and emergency money, when playing cards replaced currency in times of economic crisis. Today, card money has a collector’s value. But none is as valuable as a Pokémon card that sold for 5.275 million US dollars at auction two years ago.
Near the Ukrainian village of Parutyne on the Black Sea was the ancient Greek colonial city of Olbia, where the dolphin was a symbol of seafaring and trade. Dolphin money was the local currency from 440 to 360 BCE. It was used as an offering, for journeys to the other world, and for trade – from food to luxury goods. 4.23 grams of bronze could buy 1.25 liters of olive oil.
It’s fascinating to learn about the coins that were circulating during the Middle Ages. In Bern alone, the Dicken, Plappart, Angster, Haller, and the Rollbatzen, introduced in 1492 after a coinage reform, were in circulation. Although the coin was occasionally devalued and thus earned the pejorative term “turd”, it was an export hit: Other cantons and even Italy, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Holy Roman Empire followed suit and minted their own Batzen.
Throughout human history, almost every type of goods have functioned as money for a time. Even peas – poisonous rosary peas, to be more precise. Their value once stemmed not from their highly toxic ingredient, but from their water-impermeable seed coat. Regardless of how moist they become, the weight of the peas always stays the same. One hundred peas equated to the value of one penny and were enough for two rosaries, or Pater Noster cords, as nuns and monks called them.
“You give me half a kilo of coffee; I’ll give you a pair of ladies’ shoes.” After Bach composed the Coffee Cantata, Goethe discovered caffeine and Germany’s monetary system failed at the end of World War II, the cult drink also served as a secondary currency. Shoes, then, for 500 grams of cof- fee. And now there is the first cryptocurrency backed by coffee. Around one kilogram of Arabica coffee is equivalent to one CoffeeCoin.
In 1879, a 10 rappen coin wouldn’t even have bought a quart of milk. It might have been enough for a shoeshine on the market square in Einsiedeln or a copy of the local Sarganserländer newspaper from a street seller. Nevertheless, the three-gram lightweight has made it into “Guinness World Records”. First minted more than 140 years ago, it is the world’s oldest coin still in circulation. Today, it will buy you a stamp to supplement the postage on first-class mail.
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