Circulating Coinage Metals/Materials Set! Finished?

Hello,

I have been working on this set for a while now and I have posted about it a couple of times before on coin talk while I was still building it in search for additional information but now I’m pretty confident that it’s finished now.

The goal of the set was to put together a collection of examples of all of the metals and materials used throughout history in circulating coins or trade tokens. I ended up with 27 items in total. The set includes an example of the following metals/materials: aluminum, antimony, arsenic, bamboo, bone, cardboard, chrome, clay, coal, copper, fiber, glass, gold, iron, ivory plastic, lead, leather, magnesium, manganese, nickel, palladium/ruthenium , platinum, silver, tin, vulcanized rubber, wood and zinc. Please see the photos and please let me know what you guys think and please let me know if you have any questions for me.

If anyone here knows of anything that might be missing please let me know but keep in mind that I’m not really interested in adding modern exotic metal/material commemoratives unless they were designed to circulate at face value. Thanks for looking.

Best Regards,

-Kyle

Photos Part 1 of 2:

 

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Photos Part 2 of 2:

 

A very interesting collection indeed. And educational as well. Thank you for posting it. My only thought about an additional material woud be "Bakerlite".
To the best of my knowledge it was only used for Trade Tokens.
The one I have may be Vulcanized Rubber, I had not thought of that. Until now I thought it was Bakerlite due to the wieght and color.

 

You are correct, no "R". Must be my northern accent. We like to add R's to words.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_metals

 

That's a very cool collection! I wouldn't have even thought that a third of those materials could be made into coins/tokens, but I learned something new today.

 

Fascinating!

There is also shell, if you count the British colonists' use of wampum as money, which was legal tender until an enterprising colonist made a machine that churned it out in mass and devalued it.

 

Very nice, congrats, thank you.

 

Thanks for the thought but correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that the Keeling Cocos “Ivory Plastic” coin from 1913 was made of a type of “Bakelite”? Since I don’t think that there were any other plastics available in 1913 besides Bakelite.

Also the token that you posted definitely looks like vulcanized rubber to me but I can’t tell for sure without seeing it in hand.

 

In regards to a Yap Stone, I’m trying to stick to coins and trade tokens and trying to avoid proto money. Proto money/traditional money is just too vague. So, a Yap Rai doesn’t really fit here.

In regards to finding an ancient glass tessera. Here’s a pro tip for you, every once and a while they will show up on eBay in the antiquities section for a good price.

 

Thanks for the thought but I’m not really interested in adding metal alloys unless they contain a metal that is not already represented in the set.

 

That webpage is actually one the online resources that I used to create the set but the best webpage that I found in regards to this topic is http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/pics/metal.html

 

Thanks for the thought but I would classify Wampum shell money as proto/traditional money. What I would really like to find (but I don’t know if it exists) is a coin/token made of seashell similar to the bone token shown above. Where the medium of the coin/token is the material representing something else like the bone token represents a 2 pence piece meaning that the token represents a set face value of an established currency and not just a trade item that is used for barter like wampum shell money or cowrie shell money. I would also like to find a stone item of the same concept but I am also not sure if that actually exists either.

 

It's a neat idea and glad to see what you've done. The Canada and Austria mints make coins that contain niobium.
Cal

 

My sister says "warsh cloth". We grew up on Las Vegas. I have no idea where she learned it from.