If something is rare, no matter what it is, there is someone in the world who will pay any price to have it. Limestone, for example is an ugly sedimentary rock that is very good for building. It is gray, very durable and long lasting, and it is very heavy. But the people of Yap in Micronesia did not use limestone for building. They used it for money.
600 years ago a few Yapese men decided to go out for a row in their canoes, and sometime later stumbled onto the island of Palau, and on this island they found limestone. They said, “this rock is ugly. This rock is heavy, and we must have it.”
So they began to carve donut-shaped stones and soon everyone was using the limestone donuts as currency, trading for fish and coconut meat. As the stone coin industry continued the stones became larger and larger and the designs became ever more intricate, and each stone had its own story, so that the value of any one stone depended upon its size, its artwork and the story behind its transport to Yap.
The smallest stones are less than three inches in diameter, and the largest stone coins are more than ten feet in diameter. The largest stones would sit in the same spot for generations. Possession of the stone would change but the stone itself would not move because it was just too damn heavy.
In 1871 a man named David Dean O’Keefe had an idea, a great, wonderful idea. He decided to pay the Yapese to make and transport more limestone donuts to Yap from Palau. He traded the large stones for beads, coconut meat and trepang, or sea cucumbers. He eventually imported thousands of stones onto the tiny island and soon enough, the limestone currency was completely debased, and worthless. The end.
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