why not coins?

O

octotron

First time out of the vault
I was reading about some old Roman coins that had been found and began wondering why coins wouldn't be used in the Wasteland. I mean the devs just likely decided to use bottlecaps for PA "flavor", but how would you support that practically? Paper money wouldn't last long, but coins do and should be found in vending machines, payphones, laundramats, buses, homes, shops, everywhere. There should be plenty to use as a medium of exchange (by the greatly reduced population) to augment barter (plus they're already in convenient denominations).

I think if the coins were there, that's what people would use.
So...maybe they're NOT around in any great numbers.

I remember reading that the US made steel pennies during WWII, because they had plenty of steel, but needed more copper. Perhaps the bulk of the coin supply was reclaimed by the government to quickly obtain valuable metals for the war effort.
Kids and adults alike could have responded to "coin drives" turning in change for bills. (I think there were similar kinds of drives for materials during WWII).

This effort could also be assisted by more use of credit cards/sticks/chips. Diners Club dates to 1950, and BankAmericard to 1958. I can't cite any references at the moment, but I don't think that credit devices are incompatible with general retro-future concepts.

Any such devices would be worthless pieces of plastic after the bomb, not even worth mentioning in Fallout.

hmmm
 
The reason why coins (or notes) wouldn't be used is simply because nobody is backing them up. Without the government there is nobody to confirm their value and because, as you said, they could be gathered in large quantities by survivors they would be worthless.

Caps, on the other hand, are backed up by the Hub.
 
i find it difficult for any real currency to exist in the Fallout world, or any real Post-Apoc world. Whos to say the money is worth anything? More than likely fallout would have been more accurate with bartering real items or bottle of water or something.

Any regulated money can be faked, and corruption runs high in Fallout so I'd think that any standard currency wouldn't be accepted, instead only useful/items would be worth anything.
 
Goweigus said:
More than likely fallout would have been more accurate with bartering real items or bottle of water or something.
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Huh? You do barter in Fallout, though item worth is measured in bottlecaps.
 
Barter constitutes 95% of economic exchange in Fallout. You actually only pay large amounts of caps in one place - at the Brotherhood.
 
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
The reason why coins (or notes) wouldn't be used is simply because nobody is backing them up. Without the government there is nobody to confirm their value and because, as you said, they could be gathered in large quantities by survivors they would be worthless.

Caps, on the other hand, are backed up by the Hub.
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Oversupply shouldn't be too much of an issue, as it would just lead to price inflation. (Caps wouldn't really be in short supply either).

I was thinking that survivors might just keep using them since there would be a demand for some exchange medium, and they would be used to using them. (I guess we could exclude Vault dwellers and tribals)

You point is a good one, though. An exchange medium with a solid backer (like the Hub) beats any other easily.
Thanks.
 
Goweigus said:
i find it difficult for any real currency to exist in the Fallout world, or any real Post-Apoc world. Whos to say the money is worth anything? More than likely fallout would have been more accurate with bartering real items or bottle of water or something.

Any regulated money can be faked, and corruption runs high in Fallout so I'd think that any standard currency wouldn't be accepted, instead only useful/items would be worth anything.
Click to expand...
That's not the point.

Any currency that is supported by any major trading centre becomes valid currency, because there is a reliable place where it's worth something. The Hub supported bottle caps, hence bottle caps became a currency.
That's it, really, regardless of possibilities of corruption.
 
sry ya it slipped my mind about bartering
i just meant that it would seem a bit more realistic most of the time for caps to have been worthless
 
Another reason for not having coins as currency would be because they likely phased out before the war. I would figure by 2070 almost all transactions would be done with plastic or wired from accounts.
 
Goweigus said:
sry ya it slipped my mind about bartering
i just meant that it would seem a bit more realistic most of the time for caps to have been worthless
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Except that it isn't.
The Hub supports bottlecaps as a currency. In other words: you find bottlecaps, you can go trade them in.
This means that bottlecaps have an artificial value automatically. It's very realistic for bottlecaps to be worth something, it is essentially the first beginnings of a new economy.

I could swear we had a topic about this somewhere.
 
Sorrow said:
Coins could be backed up by NCR and VC...
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They could. Maybe they aren't. This is a pretty useless statement.

Coins were used in Fallout 2, and I'm not entirely sure as to why. My guess would be that they found it more 'realistic'. The logical explanation would be that the NCR, VC and New Reno supported it. However, this too is doubtful with the high amount of rivalry between VC and NCR. It wouldn't be in New Reno's interests to exclude any single currency.

Also, another example of endorsed currency is the mining strips in Redding.
 
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
Actually, I believe that the "coins" from Fo2 were just bottle caps, only crushed for easier storing and using...
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No, actually they were coins. Real money. Dollars.

Why the hell would they mine gold in Redding if they weren't going to make money out of it?
 
Angrim said:
No, actually they were coins. Real money. Dollars.

Why the hell would they mine gold in Redding if they weren't going to make money out of it?
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They were mining gold in Redding? Wasn't it Uranium, or was that just Broken Hills?

In any case, mining gold doesn't actually make much sense in any case.

EDIT: Just re-installed Fallout 2 (and came to the conclusion that everything worked out-of-the-box, as opposed to my Fallout installation), here's a screenshot:
scr00000jv9.jpg



Doesn't look much like real coins to me, really. More like small, dented pieces of metal.
 
If I recall correctly, Redding - gold, BH - uranium.
Shouldn't gold be an all-around currency? Even if the currency the coins were made in was worthless (sorry if this part of the sentence sounds silly), there'd still be the value in gold - that is, if those coins were made from gold. That would explain why the three major cities in F2 had so much interest in Redding. Control Redding, control gold mining, control money.
 
They were mining gold in Redding and they traded the gold with New Reno and NCR. NCR offered them security and New Reno drugs.
 
mr. pastorius said:
If I recall correctly, Redding - gold, BH - uranium.
Shouldn't gold be an all-around currency? Even if the currency the coins were made in was worthless (sorry if this part of the sentence sounds silly), there'd still be the value in gold - that is, if those coins were made from gold.
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No, there wouldn't. Gold is a currency as well, it has no intrinsic value since it is a useless metal. Unlike iron, for instance, from which you can make lots of tools and copper, which is used in electrical circuits.

The only value gold has is the value economic societies put in it. Because gold is a rare metal, it was often used as currency by economic societies. A lot of countries even had the 'gold standard', which essentially meant that everything was measured in gold, and legal tender was a guarantee that you can get a certain amount of gold for it.

However, this is all completely moot in a post-apocalyptic environment. The states and societies have collapsed, hence gold has no value whatsoever *unless* societies decide to once again make gold valuable. Which would make little sense, really, since it would just be giving importance and power to Redding when they don't need to.

mr. pastorius said:
That would explain why the three major cities in F2 had so much interest in Redding. Control Redding, control gold mining, control money.
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Not really. It is, in fact, nonsensical since the only town that has any advantage in giving importance to gold would be Redding itself. And that isn't in any way a trading centre.

In fact, I'm still not sure how it would have started a mine in the first place.
 
Yeah, it might not make a lot sense, but that's irrelevant now, because it is a fact that in Fallout 2 gold was mined in Redding and they traded it with New Reno and New California Republic.

And they do have "real" money in Fallout 2 which, if I recall correctly, was in fact gold. Mined in Redding. The "new money" was introduced to the people in wasteland somewhere in between Fallout and Fallout 2.

I think all this comes out quite clear, when you play Fallout 2 and I think this is stated in Falloutvault and maybe in some Fallout Bible. I don't know, I am too lazy to check now.

Fallout 2 has lot of these things in design that don't fit.
 
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