Coin Chest

Oak

Oak was commonly used for shipbuilding and sea chests in England. I guess the reason for this may have something to do with a lack of natural timber resins which can gas out, and affect coins.
However, some woods are disastrous for storing coins in.

One example is Australian Red Cedar which is a now very rare and valuable cabinet timber. Australian Red Cedar never rots or gets white ants or borers in it, and chars on the outside only in light fire. It also takes on a fabulous dark brown to red wine sheen, when it is french polished. It is perhaps the easiest of all cabinet timbers to work with.

It is an altogether different species to other trees that are called 'cedar', in other parts of the World, and native to Australia.

The reason for such amazing performance is because it has a semi poisonous resin in it. It can slowly gas out over decades, and is no good at all for storing metal objects, but it is as good as Camphor Wood for storing clothes.

The British Museum acquired a lot of it's coins during the 19th century, when it could afford those priceless examples, which it cannot now. Those old collections were originally put together by 'gentlemen', and often bequeathed to the Museum. A lot of those old English collections were originally stored in good old English oak cabinets.

The term 'cabinet friction' is occasionally mentioned when describing the condition of high priced lots in major public auctions.

No - to day you would use a good quality mahogany.

I think it comes down to what you want to do. If you want to ensure that your coins will not tone or tone slowly, avoiding wood would be the best solution. However if you want to recreate the feel of the pirate days for a show and have some coins in them, I don't think the type of wood would matter too much if the coins you are dealing with aren't worth a lot.

Bear in mind coins struck in those days were gold which are much harder to tarnish instead of the cheap base metals that we have. Yes silver does tarnish as well.

Its not I want to store my coins that way as well I'm just curious how people for centuries did it.

At the time of the failure of the contract for the production of Fugio coppers, in 1788, a quantity of mint-state coins were acquired by the Bank of New York. They were transported there in a wooden keg.

If it's stories you want...
In the 1970's, when a section of I-95 was constructed along the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia, metal detectorists surreptitiously working the site after hours found hundreds of 1699 William III halfpennies. They were all identical, and all counterfeit. The spot was believed to be the site of a known tavern at the busy international port. It's thought these were squirreled away there shortly after arriving as a single shipment from England, much like a cargo container of fake iPhones might arrive from Asia today. They were also thought to have been shipped, and buried, in a keg.