15 Forgotten Currencies That Shaped Economies
Modern financial discussions focus almost exclusively on dollars, euros, and yen—overlooking the fascinating array of currencies that once facilitated trade, built empires, and connected distant economies. These historical monetary systems weren’t just quaint coins and curious paper notes; they were powerful economic tools that fundamentally shaped regional development and global commerce.
Here’s a look at 15 forgotten currencies that once dominated markets and transformed economic landscapes.
Maria Theresa Thaler
This silver coin depicting the 18th-century Austrian empress became the dominant trade currency across North Africa and the Middle East for nearly two centuries. First minted in 1741, the Thaler’s reliable silver content earned such trust that Austrian mints continued producing exact replicas—all bearing the original 1780 date—until the 1960s.
Merchants from Ethiopia to Morocco refused other currencies for major transactions, forcing European colonial powers to acquire Thalers for local commerce despite having their own currencies.
Wampum
Native American tribes along North America’s eastern seaboard used these cylindrical shell beads as ceremonial objects and trade currency long before European contact. Crafted from white and purple seashells—with purple beads worth roughly twice as much as white—wampum gained such importance that Dutch and English colonists formally recognized it as legal tender.
Colonial governments even established official exchange rates against European currencies, effectively creating North America’s first formal monetary system before eventually undermining it by mass-producing counterfeit beads.
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Cowrie Shells
These small porcelain-like shells from Indian Ocean mollusks served as currency across Africa, South Asia, and parts of China for over a thousand years. Their durability, distinctive appearance, and relative scarcity made them surprisingly effective money—impossible to counterfeit and naturally resistant to inflation until European traders began importing massive quantities from the Maldives.
Chinese merchants once paid taxes in cowries, while West African kingdoms built entire economic systems around their circulation, with specific shell types commanding different values in different regions.
Salt Currency
Ancient Rome paid soldiers with salt allotments—the origin of the word “salary”—but Ethiopia’s salt trade took monetary innovation further by standardizing amoleh salt bars as currency until the 20th century. These hand-cut bars, roughly 25 centimeters long, funded the Aksumite Empire’s rise and facilitated trade across the Horn of Africa for centuries.
Caravans transported these salt “coins” across punishing desert terrain, with merchants literally able to shave off smaller denominations when needed for minor transactions.
Stockholm Banco Notes
The world’s first proper banknotes in a Western economy appeared in 1661, when Sweden’s Stockholm Banco issued paper currency to replace unwieldy copper plates that had become too heavy for everyday commerce. These revolutionary notes promised future payment in metal currency—a concept so new that poor regulatory controls caused hyperinflation within just seven years, bankrupting the bank.
Despite their spectacular failure, these experimental notes established the basic concept underlying all modern paper currencies—that money’s value could exist independently from physical metal.
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Notgeld
During Germany’s post-World War I hyperinflation, hundreds of cities, companies, and even restaurants issued emergency money called “notgeld” (necessity money) to continue local commerce as national currency became worthless. These often beautifully designed notes featured local landmarks and folklore—becoming collectors’ items even during circulation. Some towns printed notgeld on silk, leather, or porcelain when paper became too expensive.
This decentralized monetary experiment kept the German economy functioning through monetary chaos and demonstrated how local currencies could sustain community economies during national financial collapse.
Rai Stones
The Yapese islanders of Micronesia developed perhaps history’s most unusual currency—massive limestone discs quarried on distant islands and transported home on rafts. Some “coins” stood over 12 feet tall and weighed thousands of pounds, making physical movement impractical.
Instead, oral history tracked ownership changes, with some valuable stones remaining in place after shipwrecks—the community acknowledging their owners’ wealth despite the stones resting on the ocean floor. This system remarkably anticipated modern digital currencies, where value exists through community consensus rather than physical possession.
Axe Money
Bronze Age civilizations across Mediterranean Europe and Western Asia used miniature axe heads as standardized currency, creating denominations of different sizes long before the invention of coins. Archaeological evidence shows these weren’t functional tools but purpose-made trade items with consistent weights.
This “commodity money” represented a crucial evolutionary step between barter and true currency, establishing the principle that money needed standardization rather than practical utility. Some ancient Mediterranean kingdoms subsequently developed specific axe-shaped metal ingots exclusively for commerce.
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Card Money
When coin shipments from France failed to arrive in colonial Quebec during the 1680s, Governor Jacques de Meulles created North America’s first paper money by cutting playing cards into quarters, signing them, and declaring them redeemable for future coin shipments. This emergency currency worked so effectively that the card money circulated for over seventy years, funding development throughout New France.
Unlike most emergency currencies, these playing card notes maintained their value remarkably well until the British conquest—proving that monetary value depends more on trust than intrinsic worth.
Tempo
Medieval Japan’s complex monetary landscape included these large copper coins with center gaps for stringing together. Tempo coins—worth about 100 modern yen each—became so fundamental to Edo-period commerce that merchants calculated all major transactions in tempo despite simultaneously using gold, silver, and domain-issued paper currencies.
The coin’s widespread acceptance created Japan’s first truly national market, helping transform disconnected feudal domains into an integrated economy. Some rural communities continued using tempo for calculations decades after the Meiji government introduced the yen in 1871.
Spanish Piece of Eight
The first truly global currency dominated world trade for nearly three centuries after its initial 1497 minting. These silver coins—officially called “reales” but known as “pieces of eight” because they could be physically cut into eight segments for smaller transactions—became so essential to global commerce that China’s entire economy reoriented around acquiring them through trade.
The United States even recognized them as legal tender until 1857, with the American dollar originally defined as equivalent to their silver content.
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Katanga Cross
These distinctive X-shaped copper ingots served as currency across central Africa for over 500 years, facilitating trade networks that connected the continent’s interior regions. Weighing between 1-2 pounds each, these crosses represented a standardized value while doubling as a practical source of metal for tool production when needed.
Portuguese explorers reported seeing massive treasuries containing thousands of these crosses, documenting sophisticated African economic systems that predated European contact. Some interior regions continued using these crosses alongside colonial currencies well into the 20th century.
Continental Currency
America’s first national paper money—issued to finance the Revolutionary War—became so worthless that “not worth a Continental” remained an American expression for worthlessness well into the 20th century. British forces deliberately counterfeited these notes to undermine the revolutionary economy, flooding markets with fake bills.
This spectacular monetary failure profoundly shaped American constitutional thinking, leading the founding fathers to initially prohibit paper money and creating an enduring national suspicion of centralized banking that delayed the establishment of the Federal Reserve until 1913.
Potlatch Coppers
Among Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest, copper shields—known simply as “coppers”—held deep ceremonial and cultural meaning. These striking, decorated pieces weren’t used as everyday money.
Instead, they represented status and wealth in a system where value came from giving, not hoarding. At potlatches—elaborate gift-giving ceremonies—a single copper could be worth several canoes or even a slave, showing just how powerful these symbols were.
But in the late 1800s, colonial governments stepped in. They banned potlatches and seized coppers, aiming to erase Indigenous ways of life and push assimilation through force and policy.
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Venetian Ducat
This gold coin, introduced in 1284, maintained nearly identical weight and purity for over 500 years—an unprecedented achievement in monetary stability. The ducat’s reliability made it the preferred currency for international trade from England to Ethiopia, with merchants across three continents accepting it without question.
Venice’s trading empire expanded largely through this monetary innovation, with the city-state’s bankers developing sophisticated financial instruments around ducat-denominated contracts. Some Mediterranean ports continued accepting ducats decades after Venice itself fell to Napoleon in 1797.
Beyond Modern Money
These forgotten currencies remind us that monetary innovation isn’t unique to our digital age—societies have continuously reinvented money to solve economic challenges and facilitate commerce. From massive stone discs to playing cards, salt bars to shell beads, these historical currencies built trading networks, funded empires, and connected distant economies long before our modern financial system emerged.
Their stories reveal that money has always been primarily a social technology—valuable not because of intrinsic worth but because communities collectively agree to trust the promise each currency represents.
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