We all know how inventive (and sometimes devious) the human mind can be in inventing different kinds of mediums of exchange – which we simply call money. Everybody has heard of cigarettes or cowrie shells, used by people in different economic situations as a replacement for all so familiar gold coins or Ben Franklin portraits in green. And everyone who has read an intermediate macro book by Gregory N. Mankiw must remember the fascinating story of 12-feet stone wheels used as the currency on the mysterious Island of Yap (Image 1). However, it appears that these are just a couple of examples of how far people could go to invent money and what could they use as a legal tender – and I will bring some more.

2.     Wooden money

The Great Depression was the greatest financial crisis in the history of the United States, and quite probably, the worst crisis ever. It hit households and financial sector almost equally hard. This produced some strange results. On December 5, 1931, the Citizen's Bank of Tenino, Washington failed and created a shortage of money. This left the merchants of the area unable to get change without traveling about 30 miles over mountainous roads in automobiles ill-suited to that purpose, on roads that were built for horses and mules to traverse. The average round trip was about four hours. Much too long for merchants to be gone from their stores. A meeting of the Chamber of Commerce first resulted in the local newspaper (Independent) printing up the scrip of 25 cent and $1, $5 and $10 denomination.

Later, one Albert Balch offered a new printing material – “slice wood” and being relatively cheap and available, the Chamber started issuing wooden money and with proper anti-counterfeiting measures too - one issue of a thousand even carried a “watermark” reading “Confidence makes good; Money made of wood”, which could be seen by holding it up to the light.

3.     Complementary Currencies

The scrip like the above is just one example (although a weird one, in a way) of complementary currency - currency meant to be used as a complement to another currency, typically a national currency. The examples of such currencies are numerous – indeed, the 2006 Annual Report of the Worldwide Database of Complementary Currency Systems listed 150 complementary currency systems, working perfectly well alongside the official ones. One interesting example is a so called Lewes Pound – a local currency used in the town of Lewes, East Sussex as a response to climate changes and peak oil. It probably has the longest history of all modern such currencies – first being issued in 1789 and being a legal tender for more than a century – till 1895. Predictably, it is pegged to the GBP with the exchange rate of 1 to 1; however local businesses prefer using the Lewes Pound and therefore charge a lesser fee in it.

PS. And of course one cannot omit the Disney Dollar – the best currency for any kid who ever had an opportunity of visiting Disneyland.

4.     Galactic Currency

The scientists from the National Space Center and the University of Leicester have come up with a new currency, designed specifically for the inter-planetary travelers – with a tongue-in-cheek name of Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (or Quid – a British slang for one pound). They assert that the sharp edged items or anything chemically active would be dangerous to carry in space travel, so the devised “coins” are made of biopolymer and have moulded edges, so that they would not damage anything, if the accidentally float free in zero gravity.

5.     Recycled Money

Until the 1850-ies the West Indies did not have any official local currencies – chiefly because the British Empire didn’t allow them to mint their own and they had to settle for whatever the monetary policy of London was allowing them to have. However the demand for money was much larger than the supply – colonies like St. Kitts and Nevis being both a hub for merchant ships crossing in hundreds the Atlantics and a tourist center for the wealthy Europeans and Americans. As a result, the residents of those (and other) colonies started countermarking foreign coins to use them as their own currency. The process involved striking an identifying impression (usually the initials or name of the confiscating colony, territory, etc.) and, in many cases, a value, on obverse surface of the particular coin. Some countermarking would include cutting hole in a coin (e.g. on Martinique the hole would have been heart-shaped) and both, the “ring” and the “plug” would be used as local currency (see Image 3; picture taken from The Coinage of West Indies by Howland Wood.

6.     Spiritual money

Everybody knows an official motto of the United States which is also put on the US currency – “In God we trust” (meaning, of course, that all others pay cash). The tiny republic of Palau went even further in their religious zeal and create a non-circulating legal tender, which actually contains a vial of holy water from the famous Grotto of Lourdes.

7.     The TV-coin

 However, probably the most unusual, strange and weird money of all, is a coin issued by the Cook Island to commemorate the 80 years of television in 2006. The coin is actually equipped with a tiny LCD screen and contains a short video clip of the inventor of TV, John Logie Baird.

8.     Mackerel Economics

Remember one of the most popular of commodity money referred to earlier – the cigarettes? Well, in a modern non-smoking world this has been changed too. Apparently, since the federal prisons in the US have prohibited smoking, cigarettes have been replaced by first cans and then plastic-and-foil pouches of mackerel. And the demand is so high that it actually affects the outside world - Mackerel supplier Global Source Marketing Inc. says demand from prisons has grown since 2004. Which again shows that money, in any form available or devisable – is inseparable from human life.