Question About Unusual Coinage Materials/Post Your Unusual Materials Coins!

In 2016, Palau minted a small (250) run of these coins, which were made with slices of the Muonionalusta meteorite. They were the first of their kind, as previously only bits of meteorite had been embedded into coins. 200 of them were rhodium-plated, and 50 were gold-plated.

A few countries have done similar since then. For example, this is a 2019 Niue issue that was also made of slices of the same meteorite. Some of these coins actually say "999 fine meteorite" on the coin itself.

I haven't noted any bimetallics because I haven't gotten the chance to go through them in any detail, but this one is pretty nice because it's been enamelled.

By the way... most Canadian municipal trade tokens were issued out in pvc flips and really have to be removed from them. I've had ones where the pvc naturally glues itself to the enamel part of the token.


Also, I recently got this. This set of Hadersfeld notgeld is made of the same type of wood as the more common plywood ones. The plywood-style ones are pretty common while this set is quite rare, with a 'mintage' of 100.

This modern nclt was released a few years ago but I only came across it recently. It is issued in the name of Tristan da Cunha, face value of £5, and is made of jasperware (a type of pottery)


I also got one of these recently.

The Sternberg Saddlery leather scrip was issued in 1933 and quite rare. One source says only $30 in face value is outstanding, so this $1 bill is quite a bit considering as much.

It took seemingly forever to get one of these in hand since the German Government delayed its release do to the pandemic but I finally got one.

2021 Germany 10 Euro Coin made with CuNi center, clear polymer ring, and blue anodized Niobium plated CuNi outer ring. Business strike for general circulation, making it the first coin made with Niobium meant for general circulation.

@nautilator: The Wedgwood-made "Three Charities" coin for Tristan da Cunha is a great looking piece of NCLT.

Thanks for sharing it!

Been a while since I added anything here.



Blaine's wooden depression scrip. These are fairly common (that goes double for the reprints) but I don't think these have been added to this thread yet.



Though not an unusual material, it's unusual and noteworthy due to its material. Sycees are boat-shaped ingots cast in China on a local level. Many are silver (including this one) though some of the really nice ones are gold. This one doesn't have any identifying marks which is probably why it was on the cheaper side...




Swedish birch bark token from c. 1670. There are at least six different Swedish birch bark tokens, this one is likely the most common of them (which is not to say it is common, mind you!). Naturally curled. 1 last = 12 barrels of coal.



Not long after the birch bark token above, they switched over to leather tokens. Probably distorted, may be part of how they end up as the years go by. This is probably the oldest ownable leather item one can reasonably get a hold of.




This is another Estonian locally-issued leather scrip, slightly older than 200 years. Not in great shape but these are not exactly common to begin with. It has a shield on the reverse.



Redwood souvenir, not that hard to get a hold of.




Large Chicago Expo wooden medal. This and other wooden medals of that time are far less known than the Philadelphia centennial ones.




Swedish leather and wax token, good for 10 tons? barrels? of coal, probably about 300 years old. These are actually quite neat because all the identifying information (town, etc) are actually part of the wax (though that has broken off of this one). A similar Swedish token is made the same way, but wood instead of leather.




I was told that this nondescript Canadian token is made of whale bone. While I have no additional information about it, that smells about right.




Goldbacks have been out for about 2 years now and were made so there would be small units of gold out there. Naturally, they're sold at dramatically more than their gold value. They're quite beautiful to see and I can't get a very good picture of it. These are technically plastic-plated gold.

Some island in the Caribbean issued gold and silver leaf NCLT currencies a few decades ago, but I never got to look into it and forgot who did it.




This is one of a set of Swedish tokens used in the Dannemora Mines c. 1850-1870. They're tin-plated steel, which is very commonly seen in British co-op tokens but I had otherwise not seen this material used elsewhere.




Someone who sells soda caps got the bright idea recently to print up trade tokens on bottle caps. I asked him to verify and yes, these are legitimate trade tokens.



And something fun, advertising bills printed on sponge. You're supposed to drop them in water to watch your money grow though I'm not doing that with any of them.

Wow, so many awesome items!

On my own end I wanted to share an interesting fact I learned recently, which would add a weird spin on the list of elements used in coinage: turns out that (the planchets for?) the Swedish iron 1, 2, and 5 öre coins from 1942-50 were covered with a thin coating of copper selenide for rust protection (a process apparently known as "cold bluing").

I'm not actually sure if that would be enough to classify selenium as one of the elements in circulating coins. On one hand, the actual amount of selenium in those coins (if there is even any... could that be tested?) is probably minuscule. On the other hand, the addition was clearly deliberate and not some kind of alloy impurity. Hard question.

I planned to post this a long time ago, but I couldn't find any examples of those types in my collection (I know I have some but they were apparently better hidden than I expected). Still don't know where mine are, so here's a Wikipedia pic...



The brown color is apparently consistent with copper selenide. The lighter bits are presumably places where the coating had either worn away or not been applied; not sure which is more plausible.

(This specific coin actually illustrates iron for the Wikipedia article on coinage metals. The "Se" in the file name is for Sweden, not selenium. Interesting coincidence!)