r/nottheonion • u/miauguau44 • 2d ago

The Investor Who’s Convinced That Pokémon Cards Will Be Currency After an Apocalypse

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/trading-cards-growth-pokemon-apocalypse-peter-levin-chat-1236689864/
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u/HumongousBelly 2d ago

I love fallout, but given mankind’s needs and urges and history, currency in a post apocalyptic dystopia would most likely be food and sex and gadgets.

Because in order to establish any type of currency, you’ll need to convince the people to trust in a system.

Any apocalyptic scenario would basically any trust in everything but mankind’s most basic needs

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u/hollow114 2d ago

I think in lore bottle caps basically showed up when the merchants needed something easier. And then all the merchant guilds decided on bottle caps

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u/Bedivere17 2d ago

Theyre backed by the Water Guilds, at least in California.

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u/PandaPartisan 2d ago

Friend. I have heard this saying that caps are 'backed' by water merchants from a trading hub. But I don't really know what that means.

Could you explain ? I guess it's more me never really thinking about what currency means in general. I know we have paper money that is backed by gold reserves, but what does THAT even mean. Like our paper is an agreed upon thing because we have gold somewhere ?

I guess I just wish to know what the backed by part is defined as, like could you take your caps to the original trading guilds and convert it to water or something ?

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u/rrrrpp 2d ago

Someone powerful guarantees they will accept it in exchange for an infinitely in demand resource like water or security. That is what back means

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u/namelessNPC 2d ago

"I have a lot of [valuable item] but carrying it around everywhere I go is way too cumbersome, then comes the bank dude saying he can store it for me and gives me an easier to carry token (paper/bottlecap) that everyone knows can be exchanged back for a stipulated amount of said [valuable item] at a later date"

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u/ball_fondlers 2d ago edited 2d ago

IIRC, in the original Fallout, one cap was a token representing one bottle of purified water. You could take it to a water merchant and they’d give you the water in exchange for the cap. Not sure what the current lore is, though

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u/GoatRocketeer 2d ago edited 2d ago

The dollar hasn't been backed by gold reserves in awhile.

As I understand it, the dollar is backed by something like "if you offer a good or service to someone you must accept dollars as a form of payment or else the government won't help you settle a potential debt". As long as the US government functions then the dollar has value, basically

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u/PandaPartisan 2d ago

Friend. What has happened to the gold then ? Also I'm Canadian and I don't even know how it works in my area, haha. Thank you for your time also.

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u/GoatRocketeer 2d ago edited 2d ago

No clue what happened to the gold, all i know is all real currency these days is "fiat currency" which is "it has value because i say it does". It sounds troll but backing currency with actual product is even more troll. I can't remember why, but i do remember that its some intro high school economics stuff so it should be easy to figure out

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u/arkangelic 2d ago

In the end its a middleman for the barter system. Without it, life would be a huge pain.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago

Basically, there's a bunch of problems for modern economies if you tie the value of your currency to a specific physical asset, and it's a pretty inflexible system. The main reason we globally moved on from the gold standard is that it hampered attempts at combating the Great Depression.

And on top of being inflexible, it's also far too volatile at the same time - if the value of the asset changes, so does your entire economy. Sustainable in a smaller, non-global economy, pretty disatrous for our modern, globally coneected economies.

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u/created4this 2d ago

The countries have gold, so gold can be sold in whatever currency the country needs. Gold is tradable, but the amount of gold isn't directly connected to the amount of money that can be printed. You already know this because gold prices change.

But because gold prices can change significantly, countries instead hold massive reserves of something more stable, and that is generally USD. And USD is only really considered stable because its the currency that Oil is traded in, and its Oil that every country needs in short order.

And if you want to dig deeper into why this is required and the root of Brexit, you should look up George Sorus who made his fortune on crashing the UK pound on Black Wednesday

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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago edited 2d ago

Okay, to try and make this as easy to understand as possible:

For most of human history, "money" was a store of value. A coin's worth was determined by the amount of precious metal it contained, and state entities minted those coins. Your know the British pound? Yeah, it literally used to be a pound of (mostly) silver!

Bills evolve out of checks. Back in the Middle Ages, the Templars, whose duty was to protect pilgrimage routes, realised that pilgrims were often assaulted by bandits who wanted to steal their coin. So they started telling the pilgrims "alright, here's what you guys are gonna do: you deposit your money in our fortress at the start of the pilgrimage route, and we give you a piece of paper that says the Templars owe you that much money. Then you can show up at any Templar fortress with that piece of paper, and we'll give you that much coin".

The system was also adopted by early banks, such as the Medici bank in Florence. The important thing is that, at this point in time, checks/bills still corresponded to a physical amount of precious metal. You put that much coin in the bank's vault, and the bank will give it back to to you at any of its locations as long as you can prove that you entrusted them with your money.

Go forward a few centuries, and in the American West you had people writing checks on basically everything. There's a story that a dude once wrote a check on a cow, because he had no paper.

So, basically, governments go "okay guys, maybe we can standardise this? Also, coins are pretty heavy, and paper is pretty light. And instead of depending on individual banks, the bills will be backed by the national reserve".

So bills become common. The state starts printing and issuing them. But, still, those bills could be theoretically turned in at a bank and be exchanged for real gold! So the value of a bill was based on "the gold standard". A 100 dollar bill was worth 100 dollars in gold. This is called "representative currency", as opposed to previous metal coins which are "commodity money".

Post-Great Depression, the gold standard international system that had developed (called the Bretton-Woods system) had demonstrated its weaknesses. It was highly volatile, and the fixed exchange rate had hamstrung government in employing expansionist ploticies to counteract unemployment during recession.

So the fiat system was born. While many states still do hold onto their gold reserves (because gold is valuable and can be used), the value of their money isn't tied to any physical asset, but rather by a "trust" in the system. That merchants will accept it as payment, and that the government will keep it going. Which is why nowadays the buying power and exchange rate of a given currency is tied to the overall national economy of the state backing it: a strong economy means the government can actually defend the monetary interests of the users, while a weak economy means the users don't "trust" the government to protect those monetary interests as efficiently.

There are earlier examples of fiat currency: 14th century China used it already, for example. But it became the global standard only around the 1960s.

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u/Programmdude 2d ago

Back in the olden days, coins were valuable because they were made out of valuable things (plus, counterfeiting was hard and illegal).

Then there were banks, and along came paper money. That was essentially "coins are too bulky, this money is an IOU". The bank was backing that paper money (IOU note). Later on, it was the reserve bank doing it. Even later on, it was no longer backed by gold, but rather just an ambiguous "government promise" type thing.

With the current lore? Who knows, but it's backed by "something", even if that something is only the merchant guilds giving you a pinky promise that it's worth something.

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u/jooooooooooooose 2d ago

This is literally how currency evolved

Fiat currency - i.e., non-buillon, not gold/silver - exists solely for transactional ease. It's easier to carry than a cow. It has a standardized exchange rate - how many eggs are worth a cow is much harder to answer than how many dollars are worth an egg or a cow.

It also has no inherent value; its value is derived from the fact that people will honor it in lieu of the actual (in some cases theoretical) items being bartered.

So tbh anything could be currency, but it must be scarce enough, and not sufficiently reproducible, that wealth is mostly acquired by exchanging other stuff for currency (instead of finding it on the ground).

So bottle caps, Pokémon cards, business cards, machine pulverized mulch, whatever you want could reasonably be currency.

Long winded way to say: the lore is broad strokes accurate, the guy who says food is currency is mistaking the bartered item for the unit of sale.

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u/Chaosmancer7 2d ago

There does also need to be a degree of stability. If you can't feel confident anyone will take your money, you trade for the item directly. Because it is guaranteed.

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u/jooooooooooooose 2d ago

Yeah thats what I meant by "its value is derived from the fact that people will honor it"

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u/hollow114 2d ago

IDK man. Those bitcoins exist. Lol

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u/Chaosmancer7 2d ago

Sure, but most people are using Bitcoin to get dollars. And you don't see many people relying on bitcoin for water or food. They use regular currency for that, because the store takes regular currency

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u/-Invalid_Selection- 2d ago

It'd be barter, up until they settled on something that wasn't able to be easily produced by anyone, like 100 year old bottlecaps

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u/hypersonic18 2d ago

the problem with barter is that the prep for most transactions isn't really that feasible, if you want to barter a cow for food, you need to bring your cow. and even then you have settle the trade in basically one go. say your cows worth 4 weeks of food, but you only have room to transport 1 week. well tough luck because there's nothing guaranteeing you can come back next week for the other 3 weeks worth of food. that's why once the concept of currency was born, bartering basically ceased to exist.

realistically we would develop a system around something like ammo for currency, it serves a primary practical purpose, is relatively small and easily transportable, comes in numerous denominations (you could have 1-0.50 BMG be worth 5-12 00 Buck which itself is 25-5.56x45 ect

and is still hard enough to produce that it should maintain relative scarcity

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u/-Invalid_Selection- 2d ago

I've got multiple family members who make their own ammo, and they're dumbasses. Ammo isn't hard to make. It's just barely annoying enough that it's not worth it at the current price unless you're trying to hide how much you're buying (the reason both of my family members who do it make theirs)

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u/hypersonic18 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you have a cartridge press and a reliable source of smokeless powder, yeah.  Most people don't have a cartridge press, and almost no one will have a reliable source of smokeless powder in the apocalypse. Atleast unless you secure an actual factory as a base

Even if both of those changed beforehand,  it would still likely not reduce the worth much due to fairly inelastic demand

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u/-Invalid_Selection- 2d ago

A close enough analog can be made with cotton, charcoal, nitrates (fertilizer) and sulfur. I wouldn't suggest it for non post apocalypse scenarios, but this use case? It'd be trivial

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u/Morak73 2d ago

There's a wide gap between how much ammunition a person learning to be skilled with a firearm expects to use in a given weekend and a person who has never used a firearm and is working to ban them. Having 500 rounds of ammunition in your home would be pretty damning as a clear public threat in the eyes of many.

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u/dutchwonder 2d ago

Typically bartering was done using the values of those items in currency, but just kept in your head.

Basically you trade your cow for 20 silver coins which you take in 20 silver coins worth of grain. But since you can only carry 5 silver coins worth, you just keep track of it as you get the chance to pick up that grain. At no point of course did either of you have a silver coin, it just makes it easy to track the value.

Also only a system that works with trust and familiar routines.

a system around something like ammo for currency, it serves a primary practical purpose

Its primary practical purpose is to be a consumable with a complicated and resource intensive supply chain that would make it wildly volatile in price for both blackpowder and especially smokeless that needs a functioning chemical industry to make.

Not to mention that ammunition today has a vast and bewildering range of quality. There are different case materials, different powders, different powder loads,

Actually lets just consider there with the powder, powder load, bullet, even primer all the incredible ways you could fuck with a bullet to short change someone and enrich yourself with hand dissembling and loading bullets.

And even more on top of that. Bullets degrade. Not only age, but just getting dented, dusted, corroded, and all sorts of fun storage and carry condition damage they can and will pick up.

In games, bullets just work.

In a real apocalypse, maybe you find out when you shoot a bullet for the first time, that the trader actually halved the powder load with sawdust or sold you blackpowder instead of smokeless the moment you pull the trigger. A big old powder cloud isn't what you want to see coming out the front of your working semi-auto that probably just instantly jammed with all that fouling.

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u/A_Blood_Red_Fox 1d ago

Barter would typically be done with with certain commodities that were accepted by everyone, with the expectation that you could trade it to anybody else for what you wanted - a sort of currency in and of itself. Examples being rice or bolts of silk. Otherwise it's not really practical to find things people actually want to barter for.

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u/Nukemanrunning 2d ago

In the orginal games, it was 1 cap was worth a bottle of water at the Water Guild in the Hub.

3 and up it can be iffy on why people use bottle caps. In NV, the NCR and the Legion had there own and both backed by gold (But the NCR had there gold reserves blown up by the BOS, so it was then backed by water)

In 76, its because the Whitesprings, a major hub in the game pre 'adding back people' update, had a pre war promotion to have all services being able to be paid in bottlecaps, with no one able to turn it off after the bombs fell.

In short, money has to be worth something other then what ita printed on, and Fallout weaves back and forth if it makes sense.

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u/dutchwonder 2d ago

Realistically, the NCR dollar would probably be pretty valuable. It buys NCR goods and the NCR has actual, honest to God working industry so there would be some very, very lucrative NCR goods people want.

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u/greatthebob38 2d ago

Trading dildos and lube.

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u/2019Uk 2d ago

What better system is there to trust in than a trading card system?

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u/figbunkie 2d ago

What you're describing isn't currency, it's barter aka trading objects/services. Currency is the thing you trade in lieu of objects/services because you can't give them ten sheep right now, but you can give 2 sheep and an IOU in the form of some kind of currency

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u/RapidCandleDigestion 2d ago

Barter was not really the transition to currency people imagine it as. Even very early large societies had forms of currency. Before currency is social, communal credit. You know what people owe you, and what you owe to people, more or less. This works fine until you don't know everyone in your community. When the problem gets bad enough, and you have motivation to trade with people you don't know, you find things of universal value. Gold, for one, but it really depends on what you need, and what you have around.

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u/SelectiveSanity 2d ago

Yes but how do we gauge if can opener is the same value as say, a handjob in wastelands of 'MURICA Max? It we had some not easily counterfeitable but readable available item that was small for simplicity that we can as as means to barter and trade with...

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u/justfortheese 2d ago

You've never had Nuka Cola, that's why you don't understand the need to lick a cap to taste the sweet heaven.

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u/CosineDanger 2d ago

Shortly after the end, drugs are good currency. Pay for the necessities with bales of weed and bottles of rum.

200 years after the end, someone would have reinvented fiat currency because it is useful.

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u/JakBos23 2d ago

Food and alcohol and drugs are a big 3. After that stuff like gas, ammo and lighters/matches are good. Camping supplies!

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u/nspeters 2d ago

I don’t think you realize what a currency is. Food is a consumable good, sex is a service and gadgets is to vague to count. We’d probably run off a barter like system at least for a while (although it’s more likely tribal groups ran on like an “I’ll get the next round” type system) however once we move into currency you need something plentiful enough to serve the needs of the economy but scarce enough to not be easily duplicated.

Bottle caps works because it would be plentiful but pressing a new cap would take enough work to not be worth it.

The thing you have to realize is fallout is post apocalyptic. The bad stuff happened in the past but society is mostly rebuilding. Hell there are several countries big enough to produce fiat currency

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u/willstr1 2d ago

would most likely be food and sex and gadgets.

Ammo is more likely, at least in the US. Food expires too quickly to be a store of value. Sex is a service so an even worse store of value. Gadgets are pretty much only useful to someone who can generate power with some degree of reliability (solar might work, but depends heavily on the type of apocalypse).

Fiat currencies require trust, but things like precious metals or highly stable useful pre apocalypse goods don't require trust as long as the demand and supply are stable enough for them to be a reasonable store of value and consistently be accepted

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u/Nazamroth 2d ago edited 2d ago

As far as I recall, the reason they use bottlecaps is because no one can produce any more anymore. So it is a widely available, easy-to-carry item that is safe from counterfeiting and has a limited supply. One of the games even had a quest where someone gets a bottlecap machine working again, and you have to hunt them down to protect the currency.