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

very nice Nautilator!

So I have gotten some more things.




I don't think we put this in the thread. Rwanda issued a tiny coin made of indium for the Dubai Expo in 2020.





These are rare trade tokens from about the 1870s and were made of diatite. Diatite is a compound made of shellac and diatomaceous earth, and was made as an imitation of vulcanite, due to the latter's expense. We can now add it to the list of obscure thermoplastics (gutta percha, molded mica, casein) that were seen in rare instances in numismatics. A lot of "vulcanite" items from this time were made of vulcanite substitutes.




For some reason, zirconium is rarely seen in numismatics, except in a handful of obscure tokens. Tantalum too would be a very rarely seen metal except that in modern times we started making some nclt's out of it.




The Danish auction house that put these up for bidding says they were used for salary payments for women in the navy. I certainly haven't seen any tortoiseshell plastic tokens otherwise.




The Northwest Coin Club put out a number of wooden souvenirs about 75 years ago and kept detailed information about them. These two are made with two colors of lacewood.

Very interesting items, nautilator!

Fantastic examples!

Amazing examples!

Got a few more recently.



This drink token is the first time I've found something made of corrugated cardboard. It's probably scarce but I doubt it's rare.




After years of searching, I finally came across a legitimate trade token (not a casino chip) made of nacre. The Cafe de la Paix made emergency tokens out of bone and nacre during World War I.




This bar token (same design both sides) is the first time I've come across a bimetallic with a steel core.




This relatively recent Hungarian medal would probably be called bimetallic even though its core is made of wood.

very nice examples!