13 Weird Things That Have Been Used As Money

6. Salt

Salt has been used as money by many societies, dating back to Roman times when it was paid to soldiers as their salary.

7. Parmesan cheese

The Italian bank Banco Emiliano accepts Parmigiano-Reggiano – a type of Parmesan cheese – as collateral for personal loans. The cheese takes two years to mature and can cause cash flow problems for the local dairy farmers.

The bank accepts it to give them a cash boost until the cheese is ready to be sold. If they default on the loan, the bank sells the cheese (it’s worth about $300 a wheel). The bank has a special vault dedicated to cheese and contains about $187 million of the stuff. It’s been robbed three times by cheese thieves.

8. Beaver pelts

European settlers who first arrived in North America found that one of the only ways they could trade with the Native Americans was with beaver pelts as it was one of the only things that both groups found to have value.

9. Tea

Tea has been a valuable commodity over the years, particularly in Asia where it has been used as a currency and often even favoured over coins and notes in some remote areas like Siberia and Mongolia.

10. Cocaine

In some parts of Columbia, cocaine has become the de facto currency.

Because the government has established strict border controls around towns where the drug is known to be grown and manufactured, people living in some smaller towns have lots of cocaine, but no money. This has forced them to do all sorts of transactions using blow.

11. Mobile phone minutes

Hyperinflation has devalued the national currencies of places like Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt. As a result, people have been trading mobile phone airtime minutes to make small purchases with – they train prepaid top up cards or use apps that let them send airtime wirelessly to others.

12. Cigarettes

Cigarettes have been a form of currency used inside prisons all over the world for many years (although in some places, they are worthless now, thanks to the introduction of smoking bans inside jails).

They were also used in Romania in the 1980s to bribe doctors to treat sick kids, get better cuts of meat, obtain rare or elite products and services or skip in line.

13. Confectionery

There was a huge shortage of coins in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, in 2008. Businesses that normally took in more coins than others, such as bus companies and shops, had began hoarding them or selling them on the black market.

Smaller stores and customers began trading in candy instead of coins, with the difference in prices being made up with lollies when there was a very low chance of anyone ever having the exact amount of money to the cent for a transaction.

Do you know more things that have been used as money throughout history?