Alternate currency

Iron. In non european (historical, catholic europe, not the europle+western-central-asia europe of today), iron was extremely valuable. This was due to a mixture of it being harder to find, and the sources of iron themselves being lower quality. This basically meant that if you wanted iron or steel, you had to undergo a heavy refinement process with crucibles and the like. In the end, it returned rather high quality steel for the time and all other things considered, but in rather limited quantities.

The civilizations of the region taxed in two ways. Livestock, wood, grain (spelt or rice), silk, linen, or various form of cloth, and minimum iron payments.

Yes, taxes were done through iron/steel blocks. A family was required to have enough iron to make a small hatchet yearly. Failing that, they were expected to provide other forms of raw materials.

Okay, let's go plainer:

Is the money valuable in and of itself? (gemstones, cigarettes 's bullets)

Is the money a representation of a valuable good (like money based on the gold standard)

Is it only valuable because someone says it is? (modern coinage or fallout's bottle caps)

I forgot to mention that iron was used as regular currency as well, in of itself. Sometimes it was more of a barter, sometimes it was in the form of coins.

But in either way, iron was valuable.

Europe isn't somehow blessed with an abundance of great iron ores. It's a rather common element all around, but harder to reduce to metallic form than most other metals used back in the day. So everyone had to fuck around with long and extremely fuel-hungry refinement chains (charcoal often being the limiting resource, not the ore), and steel in particular was quite valuable in Europe too. Obviously we do see some regional differences too, and over time, but that will in many cases be more about the available technology for refinement.

Sounds a lot like bitcoins, except the Rai actually exist.

Goyim foreskins.

Human teeth might work as a specialized currency, high-value because their owners won't part with them willingly, and because of their really limited supply (32 adult + 20 baby teeth)
They would be more similar to gems than money: Different types and grades, a wonderful white Canine would obviously be worth more then a worn out, yellow molar.
All in all human teeth would be far to limited in number to be of actual use, because how many teeth would a normal person reasonably part with within their lifetime?
No more than 1 or two if you can help it, and even if you are poor still you still need to chew your food.
Teeth could work as prestige objects to symbolize martial prowess, but not as standard currency.

Europe actually had better quality of ore that was easier to refine compared to asia. And more of it.

Fuel sources were a huge problem... one that europe also had a much greater resource in.

Either way, iron was extremely valuable pre machinery.

Backstory for this whole thread is I just had three wisdom teeth and a damaged molar that split removed yesterday when I had a pipe crack me in the face(wisdom teeth needed to go anyway). I'm high as a kite and on the way home from surgery my roommate told me I aggressively tried to get him to buy my teeth they let me take home and cried a little when he refused. This just seemed like a good place to ask if it'd work.

Thanks for dumbing it down. I was thinking of something that would be the equivalent to US currency so I guess that'd fall under fiat money.

I'm also wondering about taking that in with potential problem of counterfeit teeth. Teeth that may look human but came from a different animal, or some other material/non-human teeth filed, shaped or worked to look like the real thing. I can identify bone from tooth, tooth/tusk from ivory, horn from bone, etc pretty easily myself but I am not good at identifying different teeth.

Relating the inflation from tooth-currency(assuming its value would go up and down like real-life currencies), perhaps teeth from rarer/difficult to get creatures like sperm whale teeth could act in replacement of gold?

I'm going to ignore the computer AI managing money thing because I have nothing to refute how that isn't a great idea but the along the lines of physical currency/non higher tech setting; the former sounds good for an isolated economy like you said but I was thinking of something more along the lines of a different currency for most of a world. Like gold I imagine has always been valued and wildly recognized by us, even though we've replaced it. Some other countries would have their own different currency where it may or may not be higher in value to one or the other, like how the American dollar is 18.82 in pesos.

>Aside from modern cash, credits, gold, silver, gemstones, etc what else would make a good currency without relying on a straight up barter system?

Electrical energy
CPU cycles
Petrol
Calories
Time

>I ask because I'm wondering how well human teeth would work.
Not very well. Teeth aren't useful, they're just limited in supply. If you want to go organic, why not stem cells?

The more I think about it, I am not sure what would make a setting have specifically human teeth as currency either over any other animal teeth, ivory, metal, etc.It's not just elephants that have ivory, but sperm whales, narwhals, some horn bills have it and I have a couple elk ivories around somewhere.

I was thinking perhaps having all your teeth and dental hygiene is more valued and seen as a status symbol in light of The Plaque Plague or the Malocclusion Collision of 471A and doctor-dentist-barbers are some highclass people.

Fuel being a problem aside but the actual tools and equipment needed to reduce, refine and work increased it's value too, yeah? I'm no history buff or engineer either but I am assuming your run of the mill farmers didn't come by those easily either.

I could see the value of teeth being based on what was killed, as a sort of "I have slain this creature, and in slaying it provided a service of value to those it would harm". In the absence of the ability to precisely determine what creature the teeth came from however, this would likely boil down to teeth being worth more the bigger they are and the more dangerous looking they are. Some flat human teeth aren't going to be worth much unless they're distinctive as belonging to some bandit lord / other known threat, whereas bear teeth will pretty much always have reliable value.

Of course, this works until some asshole starts keeping pet sharks with some way to sift old teeth out, but edge cases will always exist with systems like this.

The problems with computer controlled money mostly come from the fact computers are, incredibly and amazingly, stupid and that you can't really assure their neutrality in dealings.

I am remind of the case of a programmer who, when designing the automatic interest program for a bank, made the "% pennies" (money lost to the program rounding down on account earnings) channel into their account. Earning them thousands every day that technically would be lost. Still it was a crime according to the law...

If you have magic in setting then it could be something to do with that: maybe bones and shit work too but you would need to dig graves to get those and thus people rely on teeth.

For example: you need to place a tooth into a swords handle to form a enchantment or you need to grind it into a paste with herbs to make a potion.

A mage can use their own teeth in times of great emergency to do spells, so capturing wizards without causing great injury is near impossible as you need to remove ALL of their teeth.

As to the manufacture of iron, you would be surprised, as so long as fuel and ore was supplied a good furnace could burn. Assuming it was of certain designs, as the ones used by certain groups had no ability to add new ore and fuel as they burn. It also depends on what kind of end product you are looking for, as anyone can heat the ore to the needed temperature to have it react but few can keep track of the ratio's and make sure that the end product is X% iron, Y% carbon and so on.

In Orc Stain the dong is their most prized possession. So much so that their currency became dong coins. They even made a neat How It's Made spread about it.

Anything backed by the state, or valuable in it's own right.

Otherwise, you have an economy of favours and barter. The vet comes to see your cows when they're sick, so you make sure he never pays for milk. You traded a cow for your wagon, and you pay off your bar tab with the occasional basket of eggs.

Bottlecaps (in the first few games) had balue because you could trade them for water at the hub. This does not make sense in 3

Yeah, they should really have some central authority backing it.

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I used:
>Ceramic coins
>Rare shells
>Aluminum coins
>Prana orbs (it's life-force, HP and/or XP rendered into solid material)

In the goblinoid lands where silver and gold are the affectations of effeminate humans, dwarfs and elves, they use:

>Humanoid ears (means you are a good warrior and killed hated enemies)
>Respected Foe Skull (kinda like the prana orb, but the unfortunate's soul is locked inside the skull; worth many humanoid ears)
>Favor tokens (each one corresponds to one animal totem; having a little wooden carved wolf with the right symbols means any tribe that worships the Wolf-God owes you a favor. A single favor token acounts for something like food and temporary lodging or giving a needed object, many tokens might be worth a drakkar or the help of a warband.

During the Atlantic slave trade, slaves were traded for cowrie shells. It is what the locals valued. When trying to enrich your fantasy worlds, history is your friend.

I've had an idea to translate my dice lust into my game setting.

An eccentric tribe of gamblers whose currency is multi-sided and it's value depends how it "rolls." Larger bills would have more sides, but it entails a bigger risk / gain. I haven't worked out all the kinks, but I kind of like the idea in general.

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I was saving these for a new 'Africa' or 'Arms and Armor' thread, but they are actually money.

Keep in mind though the implications of primitive currency and what it says about the SOCIETY that uses them.

It doesn't make sense for an advanced culture to utilize shells as a means of exchange. It probably also indicates a lack of contact/trade with other civilizations. Eventually the Africans started trading for guns after all.

What's the threshold for "advanced" here, and how does it come about?

Advanced would indicate that the culture has interacted with other civilizations from far and wide enough to reach some medium of exchange that is universally recognized. Gold and Silver were recognized as these standards across history among mercantile economies.

This is mainly true of larger exchanges though, more primitive methods were maintained even in more advanced cultures for smaller exchanges usually in the form of bartering.

That would work very well with some magical element.

Salt.

In most non-industrial cultures it's difficult and time-consuming to get quality salt, and it has applications in preserving food and treating wounds.

Also where the word salary comes from.

Any commodity that is sought after enough that even people who don't necessarily want or need it will accept it as payment for goods or services because they know that everyone else also will accept it.

This can be due to practicality, or because it simply looks nice. Gold eventually became the standard in our world due to both but also because it was scarce enough that even small amounts held much value.

However, sea shells, feathers, and beaver pelts have all been used as currency at one time or another. One of the benefits of having a currency which deteriorates over time is also that there's no point in horsing large amounts of it.

In a fantasy or a sci-do setting it's easy to imagine that some form of herb with healing and/or psychoactive properties could be used as currency at least in some parts of the world. Especially if you don't need large amounts of it to get the intended effect. It also gives you the opportunity to play with value beyond the amount of it. Perhaps plants which are plucked right before they're about to wither more potent than younger plants and therefore more valuable.

Various weights of salt or other similar spices.

"Cash, ass, or grass, everyone pays a price."

I think Op probably realizes that goods and services can be used as forms of payment, but he's probably looking for items that can be used as actual minted currency.

I'm a fan of of preserved trophies, but maybe not in such as an extreme as

Everyone should go read Orc Stain by the way, it's amazing.

Platinum is a good alternative to gold.

Seashells were used in a lot of African nations before European colonialism - they imported shells from parts of the world they couldn't access, letting their rulers effectively control the monetary supply by controlling imports.

>One of the benefits of having a currency which deteriorates over time is also that there's no point in horsing large amounts of it.

Seems to me that issues with saving would mean issues for banking, in turn meaning no loans for large scale projects, which in turn hamstring overall development.

The general impracticality of perishable currency would probably also make for a "meta stable" state, ie as soon as a non-perishable option present itself society will most likely switch over quite quickly, starting with using the new stuff for large payment and long time saving, and then gradually working its way down to day to day use.

hacksilver for fantasy but its kinda like coins except you can take a silver fork and chop it up.

>One of the benefits of having a currency which deteriorates over time is also that there's no point in horsing large amounts of it.

Enjoy your Subsistence economy

>The general impracticality of perishable currency
Do you know inflation is basically that right?

Yes it was and yes it still is, though modern mining techniques and surveying techniques have revealed enaugh iron deposits that this disparity is not as severe anymore.

Do you know why the Japanese never got bigtime into steel armor and why they had that ridiculus near religious culture around refining iron and folding it and such? Because iron was extremely rare in Japan and the iron found there was of terrible quality. Those hyper complicated refining rituals and the excessive folding are actually required if you want to homogenise the unpurities in all of the iron and get steel that even approaches average medival european levels. Nobody thought of making a steel armor because it was impossible for them to make large enaugh pieces of steel in sufficient quality and because it would be excessively expensive.

This was not as extreme in the rest of asia, but it was present, because there too the iron accessible to them at the time was of poorer quality than the european ones.

And that's not even talking about the higher price for all the fuel needed for refinement, because europe was also richer in suitable coal and wood.

The reason Japanese had problems with steel production is because they used large furnaces to process sand in large quantities, making the process too expensive to experiment with. Europeans used very small furnaces and bloomeries and craftsmen could fuck around without ruining themselves financially, which lead to gradual improvements in production technology.

That is pretty great.

We had a currency-less post apocalyptic game once, based on dnd 4th ed, when you met a trader you would trade items, and essentially have to barter with the dm, it was really fun.