Commodity money coins. Commodity money Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects that have value in themselves (intrinsic value) as well as value in their use as money. Examples of commodities that have been used as mediums of exchange include gold, silver, copper, salt, peppercorns, tea, large stones (such as Rai stones), decorated belts, shells, alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis, silk, candy, nails, cocoa beans, cowries and barley. These items were sometimes used in a metric of perceived value in conjunction to one another, in various commodity valuation or price system
Commodity money modern commodity markets, although they use a sophisticated range of financial instruments that are more than one-to-one representations of units of a given type of commodity. Since payment by commodity generally provides a useful good, commodity money is similar to barter, but is distinguishable from it in having a single recognized unit of exchange. described the establishment of commodity money in P.O.W camps. Radford documented the way that this 'cigarette currency' was subject to Gresham's law, inflation, and especially deflation. In another example, in US prisons, after smoking was banned circa 2003, commodity money has switched in many places to