Why use Caps?

[mb3]

I mean caps don't stack, they don't fit well with each other, and they take up waaaay too much space. A bag of like 1000 caps would be a garbage bag size. They should just stick with the barter method until a governmental power provides a standard everyone can accept.

[Shiroi Ren]

They were made from durable materail that didn't melt in nuclear fire and it was hard to counterfeit them.

[GoatOnATree]

It's pretty neat

[Vex Hilarius]

The NCR had a standard paper and coin currency since between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. In Fallout 2 there's only 1 place you can find bottlecaps and they have no value.

Fallout 1 used bottlecaps because they were backed by water and I the early days of the post apocalypse there was no one running around with like 100+ caps. Only vendors and caravans had that kind of money, and caravans meant brahmin and carts made out of backs of old cars. Plenty of space for hundreds of caps.

By the events of NV the NCR reserves were destroyed during the ongoing NCR-Brotherhood war which made their currency near useless which made many settlements fall back on bottlecaps. This is why Legion coins are worth more in exchange. 1 denari is worth 4 caps while a $5 NCR bill is only worth 2 caps.

As for the Besthesda Fallouts, they use bottlecaps because it's a Fallout icon.

[Corona Varus]

There's already a theory about that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln342caKBHs

The video is about the value of bottle caps and it explains why they use Bottle Caps, Fiat money, the Value of a bottle cap in today's economy, and the current monetary value of a single bottle cap.

Expanded. These videos are high quality and prove strong supporting claims with valid clarifications and are taken from the fallout bible and in-game lore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eEuN6w6jg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKWwyaQAJzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myr-eS2LST4 - explains how the Mojave's bottle cap economy inflated
_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflLZcazPYk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2c3TO3bWkk - you can count the total value of a bottle cap and the developers confirmed the price of the box full of bottlecaps is the same price for Fallout 4
_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJIeAf4vmEs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNmM57ypSK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzaTP6s_HcY
https://www.youtube.com/watch/9Mh_OVB3I24

I recommend watching the youtube videos created by the community that is more serious, entertaining, and understandable which also teach you and give you more knowledge.

[Thermal Lance]

"barter method" nah.

a form of currency is important for convenience. It's way easier to go to town with a bag with a thousand caps than pulling a thousand caps worth of meat behind you.

Using caps was a smart idea in-universe. Given that the machines used to make them were mostly destroyed and the rest were made unusable to avoid people using them to flood the market. Caps are finite, durable and are separate from old world money. Allowing people to start over from equal footing. The world just got reset by the old timers so it's only fair that the economy gets reset too.

Legion had it's own currency and NCR too as you pointed out. And that's cool too. But, for the average joe in the wasteland outside from the sphere of influence of those factions. This agreed upon currency is ideal.

It's not the ONLY thing that could be used as currency but I kind of understand why the idea of caps went forward. It kind of make sense.

[Angus]

If you are going to start having issues with inventory management realism then you need to just stop playing video games in general because, sorry to say, the bottle caps are the least worrying thing to account for. What about all the weapons, armor, colas, ammo, etc... that the player carries around? As far as npcs and the currency of bottlecaps in general is concerned, they could be carried easily in amounts up to perhaps a few hundred and then they would need to be stored elsewhere.

[Angus]

Bottlecaps don't take up much more space than a coin, and they literally stack better than coins since they are bowl shaped

[Angus]

Plus they're lighter than many coins

[Löthar Storm]

they don't stack well at all, 'less you mash 'em down with a hammer then they stack just fine.

[Nono]

1 Capital Wasteland Caps = 1 Nevada/NewCalif Caps?
1 Vim Caps = 1 regular NukaCola Caps = 1 Sunset Sarsp. Caps = 1 Quantum Caps and so on...?
Vim Caps and Nuka caps are produced in the same caps factory ?

Caps is just plot convenience, all americans nuclear-holocaust survivors from all-over america just agreeing to use at the same time the same currency is purely fictionnal.
A mad-max'esque inspired take on how economy is infrastructured in post-war america.

Fallout 3 has a Caps counterfeiting location I think, so there goes the forgery argument.

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by Nono:

1 Capital Wasteland Caps = 1 Nevada/NewCalif Caps?
1 Vim Caps = 1 regular NukaCola Caps = 1 Sunset Sarsp. Caps = 1 Quantum Caps and so on...?
Vim Caps and Nuka caps are produced in the same caps factory ?

Caps is just plot convenience, all americans nuclear-holocaust survivors from all-over america just agreeing to use at the same time the same currency is purely fictionnal.
A mad-max'esque inspired take on how economy is infrastructured in post-war america.

Fallout 3 has a Caps counterfeiting location I think, so there goes the forgery argument.

Well, I don't think they magically all agreed to use it at the same time really. It's just that the games never bothered explaining how it came to be.

And please, let's not clown ourselves pretending coins and letter of credits (literally how actual money started) cannot be forged. And paper money used in the US wont last centuries in circulation.

Literally anything can be used as currency. As long as a certain value can be attributed to it and it cannot be too easily forged.

Fallout 3 has a counterfeit mission. Yes, that ONE small cap press is going to throw away the entire economy of the entire post-war USA. The only reason why you got a mission for it is because it was causing a LOCAL problem. Hell, its output is not even big enough for a large faction to consider saving it for themselves and would rather just destroy it.

[Nono]

You know how FO76 indulges and dabbles in lore ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ having caps in Appalachian setting JUST 30 years after bomb fell ? Caps are a fun idea but it's all made up, pure & simple currency convenience to allow an in-game trade mechanism.

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by Nono:

You know how FO76 indulges and dabbles in lore ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ having caps in Appalachian setting JUST 30 years after bomb fell ? Caps are a fun idea but it's all made up, pure & simple currency convenience to allow an in-game trade mechanism.

I know. But that's on Bethesda for being Bethesda. Modern Bethesda can't even get the lore straight because they stopped caring about these details years ago. Hell, even TES is getting the shaft and the vast majority of the good stuff lorewise goes way back to Daggerfall and Morrowind.

Currency makes sense for any society. Why do you think you even got money in your wallet?

[Ty Tanium]

Howdy Gamestars, 'sup?

My considered, and carefully thought out socio-economic answer is...
Because they're lighter and smaller than bricks.

I would suggest that once there was no more government printing issues of notes after the bombs fell then whatever paper money existed disappeared, damaged, faded out, torn etc which saw the end of notes until the NCR cranked it back up and started producing printed money again.

The legion seem to have solid coin money, i.e. denarius, de·nar·i·us
/dəˈnerēəs/ noun: denarius; plural noun: denarii - an ancient Roman silver coin,
~Cambridge English dictionary~ so, I have always wondered why no more American currency coins, quarters, dimes, nickels etc.

Everybody else has caps which is actually more reminiscent of a barter system once practiced in the polynesian region of the Southern Pacific where the early established form of trade was shells.

Like I said, smaller and lighter than bricks (more room for guns and ammo) more durable than paper and, as the story of "old Festus and the Fabulous Treasure" reveals festus is waiting for someone to collect enough Blue Star caps to take the treasure off his hands and end his lonely vigil.

Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth...
Cheers,
T

[Nono]

Any fiduciary money would be the best money.
The small flat metal disk in your hand is worth nothing but you believe, by social pressure/adaptation, that it is worth something to trade for goods / services.
Same goes for computer money stored in bank systems.