20 Bizarre Things People Have Used As Money

As a kid, I’m pretty sure the phrase “money doesn’t grow on trees” was used to the n-tenth degree. So it amuses me a little that the common currency in medieval Finland and Russia was squirrel pelts (paws and snouts removed for small change!) which, yes, did indeed scurry up trees. In fact, the Finnish word for money, raha, historically referred to squirrel fur.

Credito Emiliano still holds bags of Parmesan in its vault (between 430,000 and 500,000 wheels, in fact), and will loan out between 60% and 80% of the value of the cheese to farmers. It has been doing so since 1953. Parmesan has been such a valuable commodity in Italy since medieval times. Which is saying a lot coming from a cheese lover. But even I am awestruck by the thought of giant Parmesan wheels as currency. This cheese totally deserves its collateral status.

Dolphin teeth have been used as currency in the Solomon Islands for centuries. I have conflicting feelings on this issue. When demand for teeth rises, hunters go back out in force. A traditional bride price runs around 1,000 teeth — the remains of ten dolphins. Conservation groups stepped in to curtail or stop the hunt, but its use has not been completely eliminated.

And I was wrong again — apparently some leaves have actually been money. From Tibet to Siberia, people in various parts of Asia have stamped bricks of tea leaves to use as money, with each brick’s value based on the grade of tea compressed to make the brick. They continued using these as money into the twentieth century. So, yeah: apparently there are circumstances in which money DOES grow on trees!

One of the strangest currencies is the money of the island of Yap in Micronesia, in the form of huge stone disks, some more than 12 feet in diameter and weighing several tons. The disks were too heavy to move, so they were exchanged by the consensus of the community, and never actually physically transferred from one owner to another.

Cowrie shells have long been associated with wealth, prosperity and abundance. In fact, they are probably the most successful money ever used. Small, durable and very difficult to counterfeit, cowrie shell money, which originated in China in about 1200 B.C., traveled the world via international trade routes and circulated in many areas of Africa and Asia until the nineteenth century. It’s amazing to think that those little shells found on a few beaches have such a fascinating history as money!

Chocolate is a currency you could (sort of) drink! I’m a sap for chocolates, so I can understand why they valued them so highly. The Maya and Aztecs in ancient times used cacao beans, the raw ingredient in all chocolate, as money to pay for items. They’d been drinking them for centuries by then, ground into a paste and whipped with water into a bitter, frothy drink.

Black pepper was so highly prized that in ancient Greece and Rome it was called black gold. When Alaric the Visigoth besieged Rome in 408 AD, his demand for ransom included pepper. For centuries it was reserved for the rich but eventually pepper became available to everyone. I don’t know what I’d do without it!

Distinctively curved and ornate Ngulu swords were once used as money by the Ngombe people of the Congo. Once associated with ceremonial execution, the blades eventually became purely symbols of wealth and status.

Prior to the advent of the coin, the tribes of the Scythian Kingdom (Black Sea region, roughly between 7th and 5th centuries B.C.) used bronze arrowheads for money, which over time became increasingly ornate including little fish. The Greeks at Olbia also used dolphin money: dolphin-shaped tokens circulated alongside the fancy arrowheads. Eventually these too gave way to actual coins. And thus began the fall of pointy money.

The Akan people of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire developed a monetary system based on gold dust, in which quantities were measured with small brass figurines, known as gold weights. The shapes ranged from animals to proverbs, and owning good sets of weights was a mark of status. This system lasted from about the 14th century until colonization.

Here’s a fun fact: I always thought of salt as just crystals, but it was so valuable in ancient times that Roman soldiers were supposedly given a special allowance to buy it. That allowance was called the salarium, and it’s where we get the word ‘salary.’ Historians aren’t convinced the salt part is true, but the salty root is right there in the word.

Square cloths called Kasai velvet, woven from raffia palm fiber, were so valued by the Shoowa people of the Kuba Kingdom in Central Africa that some owners were buried with their choicest pieces. The cloths were used for payment and in ceremonies. Their worth was determined by size and by how intricately they had been embroidered.

Sudden death of the American chestnut in the early 1900s due to a fungal blight caused a corresponding economic collapse. The plentiful wild nuts from chestnut trees in the Appalachian mountains were basically equal to cash. School children collected chestnuts, or shoe money, to be exchanged for shoes and other clothing for school. Adults traded nuts to pay property taxes, and country stores accepted them, passing them along to city vendors.

Circa 118 B.C. in Ancient China, officials issued squares of white deerskin cut to one-foot sides, marked with colorful decorative borders and with each square assigned a value. It was lightweight, making carrying money much easier than dragging around a sack full of coins.

Aztec money consisted of a T-shaped flat axe blade made of copper, too thin and soft to actually chop anything. Its primary purpose was to spend it: one axe money unit got you 8,000 cacao seeds in Aztec currency, if you wanted to turn it back into an obscene amount of chocolate. Priorities are priorities, what can I say?

In ancient China, money was made to look like objects people used every day, and these coins were difficult to stack — but very cool. Early money was fashioned into tiny spades and hoes (tools used for farming), and had inscriptions on them showing what they were worth. Money made during the Zhou dynasty was shaped like knives!

Americans are still using the word buck to describe a dollar, which derives from colonial times when Native Americans traded with fur traders. Deerskins were used as currency, and a single hide was called a buck. The practice is long gone now, but the trade has left a mark on our language that has endured for centuries. Strange and funny!

In Germany and Austria after World War I, hyperinflation swept the area and many towns issued their own emergency currency (Notgeld) — some places even used coal or porcelain. Due to a paper shortage, these bills were produced from a variety of materials: wood, playing cards, leather and pressed foil. In short, they used whatever material was on hand.

Around 2011, people in various developing countries, including Kenya, started using prepaid mobile phone airtime as an informal currency. Since phone talk time has a definite monetary value, people started transferring it, and exchanging it for goods.

This content was created with the help of AI.