At the last coin show I attended, I saw some silver "bullet" money (from Southeast Asian, I think - can't remember which country or region) that I meant to pick up but forgot to do near the end of the show, and thinking about it now has prompted me to start a thread similar to Bone's about square coinage... So, have some interesting, odd, and curious money? They needn't be coins per se, since the thing about 'odd' money is that they usually are not round disks of metal! Other than the 'bullet' money, I can think of a few off the top of my head that I've seen or read about, including Chinese 'pants' money, Chinese ceramic gambling tokens, ceramic notgeld, cowrie shells, glass trading beads, and gold packets. Anybody got any to show off? I'll start. I've got some Celtic ring money and a silver wire kopek. The kopek isn't that weird, but it's definitely not the norm, and they are EXTREMELY small!
I have a Celtic piece like Jhonn's, but that's it. I would have a kissee (sp?) penny too, but I didn't want to attempt to fly home with it. Lol. Over the summer, I promised I would find something interesting for a friend of mine. So I got her one of those Celtic ring coins. When I gave it to her, I cautioned that it probably wouldn't fit her fingers. But of course, first thing she does is try to put it on. The crazy part is that it fit perfectly! After more than two thousand years, this piece is chosen randomly by me from a group of over a thousand, and it ends up perfectly fitting the person I gave it too. I'm still flabergasted by that.
Bump! BTW, interesting story, Ardatirion. I tried to Google and Wikipedia 'kissee penny' as well, but couldn't find anything, probably because the 'kissee' part is indeed spelled wrong. But, off the top of my head, I'm guessing those are the massive stone 'coins' that one particular culture uses as a marriage dowery? Correct me if I'm wrong here. *EDIT* I was wrong! Kiss-penny: http://www.liberiapastandpresent.org/kissi.htm
Kissi money I spent over 20 years in West Africa and there is a local money that was used in relatively recent times in Guinea by the KISSI people. Maybe that is what the other poster was talking about? Here is an e-bay link: http://cgi.ebay.com/GENUINE-PRIMITI...oryZ4171QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem It's not the best, but it's the only one I could find. I don't actually have any of that money, but have a friend who got several of them as gifts. Very unusual money. I'm kicking myself because I visited both of the Guineas in West Africa (Guinea and Guinea Bissau) several times, but I was not in the coin collecting mode at the time. I did manage to collect some notes and coins, but in a random fashion. I gotta believe that some of the money from Guinea Bissau before they converted to the CFA has got to be something to be cherry-picked by anyone who collects West African currency. Facinating country. And not well known. Ooops - just saw the previous post by jhonn!!! His link is GREAT for the Kissi Penny. I started this message and then spent some time researching, so didn't see his post.
I do not generally pay much attention to the world coins section, but I do follow Liberia. I spent 5 years over there (while they were still civil). An "ivory Charlie" (door-to-door peddler of artifacts) came around with bunches of the Kissi pennies. I wound up buying 200+ of them. I don't remember for sure, but guessing at about $40. After I got settled back in the USA (late 70's), I found a hole-in-the-wall coin shop and wound up consigning the pennies to the shop. They did not manage to sell any for the first month. About 6 weeks later, I stopped by to see if they had any luck selling them and they were gone. Never heard from them since. What brought this to mind was an email from Centsles offering them for sale at ~$6 each. At those prices, That shop walked off with over $1000 of mine Still have about 20. Here is a picture of a few.
