History Main / PracticalCurrency

* In TimPowers' ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', the prevailing currency in a post-apocalyptic California is alcohol. It's a fuel, a disinfectant, and a beverage as well as money.

* In ''[[TimPowers Dinner at Deviant's Palace]]'', the prevailing currency in a post-apocalyptic California is alcohol. It's a fuel, a disinfectant, and a beverage as well as money.

* Water in ''{{Dune}}''.

* ''{{Fallout}}'' establishes that the bottle cap is a voucher for a set amount of water.
** There's even a side quest in ''FalloutNewVegas'' where you're tasked with going to a bottle-making plant and figuring out if someone has found a working bottlecap-making machine. While it's not exactly counterfeit (all bottlecaps used as currency were found, not made by any existing government), it would ruin the wasteland economy if someone started making thousands of bottlecaps.

* In GordonDickson's ''ChildeCycle'', the interstellar currency is largely based on skilled professionals. If a planet needs someone or something, they hire out a specialist in exchange. The economy of the Fourteen Worlds is based on the trade of contracts, which not only affects political decisions, but also drives the plot of several stories.

* KingdomOfLoathing is some kind of an example, since its currency is Meat. [[SubvertedTrope However, since it's currency, you can't actually eat it.]] [[DoubleSubversion However, you can make that Meat into paste to combine items with and into stacks to smith with.]]

* In the ''Uglies'' trilogy, "The Smoke" community uses instant food packs as currency, which makes [[TheMole newcomer Tally]] quite wealthy by the community's standards.

* In GeneWolfe's ''BookOfTheShortSun'' series the inhabitants of the Whorl (a giant GenerationStarship at the end of its journey, now orbiting a pair of potentially-inhabitable planets) have taken to using ''circuit boards'' as currency due to their scarcity. This of course means that the ship's already-strained technology is failing rapidly, and the theft of boards from the ship's few operational shuttles means that soon there'll be no way out for those who haven't already left.

* In ''{{Bone}}'', residents of the valley use things like eggs and livestock as currency.

In the real world, there is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money commodity money]]. Not all commodity money is practical currency, however, because gold, for example, make good commodity money, but it's valued because it is pretty and rare, not because it can be used ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Industry up until recently]] anyways).

* ''[[SystemShock System Shock 2]]'' has nanite packs as a basic exchange unit.

* In ''GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'' an episode took place at a "wine fund" were wine was used as a investing or speculating vehicle, since wine is hard to reproduce synthetically and increases in value with age. not really currency though.
* The metabugs in ''DennouCoil''. Useful for making programs to muck around in cyberspace, and as such to playful kids they're quite the commodity money.

* In ''{{Hex}}'', the AfterTheEnd RecycledInSPACE version of ''JonahHex'', the standard currency are Soames: pills used to decontaminate radioactive water.

* In the ElvisPresley film ''JailhouseRock'', his prison mentor is the richest man in prison, with hundreds of cartons of cigarettes in his cell.

* Much [[DiscussedTrope discussion]] of this in ''Discworld/MakingMoney'', including pointing out that gold is worthless on a desert island, that it's also worthless in a gold mine (where the medium of exchange is the pickaxe), and the contrast between what happens when you bury gold vs. when you bury a potato. Oh, and in the end they decide to base the currency on {{golem}}s. The idea of paper currency actually starts in the previous, when people start to use postage stamps as a means of exchange.

* A side comment by a Free Jaffa merchant in ''StargateSG1'' suggests that [[{{Unobtainium}} naquadah]] is used as currency, or at least a standard of measuring value for barter.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons''

** [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Giff]] in ''{{Spelljammer}}'' use smokepowder as currency and prefer to be paid in it.
* ''{{Deadlands}}: Hell on Earth'': Although the game itself uses dollar values for convenience, it mentions that most places operate on a barter system and any spare 'cash' the characters have is usually in the form of easily transportable luxury items.

* ''{{Gothic}}'' - in the penal colony magic ore is used as a currency. It is supported by the fact that outside world desperately needs this ore and ready to give food, booze and hookers in exchange for it. You can also find coins, which unlike most objects have zero value.

* ''GuildWars'' uses gold and platinum for its official currency, but characters can only hold 100 platinum on their person at any given time: enough to buy anything from an NPC, but nowhere near enough for trades in the player market. Thus, the ''de facto'' currency is ectoplasm, chosen for its [[PracticalCurrency use in crafting]] rare armour. It's measured in "globs" and is bright pink.

* In the TV series ''LoveAndWar'' waitress Nadine is an aging socialite whose husband is in prison from the Savings & Loan scandal of the early Ninties. At one point she mentions she's going to visit him and bring 2 cartons of cigarettes in order to buy him his way out of his latest NoodleIncident.

[[folder:TabletopGames]]
* ''DungeonsAndDragons''
** 2nd Edition Maztica Campaign boxed set. The Mazticans use cocoa beans and ears of mayz (corn) as money.
** [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Giff]] in ''{{Spelljammer}}'' use smokepowder as currency and prefer to be paid in it.
[[/folder]]

* ''Mistborn'' has fairly standard coinage, but it's also the go-to weapon for [[ExtraOredinary steelpushers]], to the point that steel mistings are called coinshots.

* A side comment by a Free Jaffa merchant in StargateSG1 suggests that [[{{Unobtainium}} naquadah]] is used as currency, or at least a standard of measuring value for barter.

* GuildWars uses gold and platinum for its official currency, but characters can only hold 100 platinum on their person at any given time: enough to buy anything from an NPC, but nowhere near enough for trades in the player market. Thus, the ''de facto'' currency is ectoplasm, chosen for its [[PracticalCurrency use in crafting]] rare armour. It's measured in "globs" and is bright pink.
* ''Metro2033'' uses pre-apocalypse bullets as currency, they produce noticeably more damage than the regular stuff, but then you would be literally throwing away cash.