Talk:Pre-War money

Why Is It So Valuable?
After all, "collector's item" only goes so far, and its not accepted as currency. I had a thought as to why its so valuable: a source of "new" paper. The ease with which Moira prints "The Wasteland Survival Guide" indicates there are publishing houses in the Wasteland, which need a supply of paper to print their new books. Where do you get sources of paper without living trees? All of the old books are destroyed, Pre-war books snapped up by the BoS, or crumble into dust the instant you read them (skill books). The only supply of strong paper to recycle for new book printing is Pre-War Money. Paper currency is printed on a much stronger quality paper than books, and all of it sat inside metal boxes (safes, cash registers, metal cases, etc.) during the Great War, so it is much less likely to be destroyed or crumble into dust than the pre-war books. --Webgiant 09:33, January 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * To quote on of my favorite films: Everybody needs money. That's why they call it "money."--Gothemasticator 09:48, January 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Everyone needs money, but in the Capitol Wasteland, they do not call "Pre-War Money" money. They certainly don't use "Pre-War Money" as money, what with thick stacks of it only going for a few bottlecaps (i.e., what they do call money). --Webgiant 07:47, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

You don't need paper for books, you could use fine leather. If brahmin skin is too thick, you could always try using squirrel leather. Ishotamaninnewreno 11:53, January 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * I must respectfully disagree, having been raised by a librarian. You do need paper for mass printing and for books which will be used in extreme environments, such as in post-apocalyptic wastelands. Animal skins are what parchment is made from, and parchment is extremely affected by its environment and changes in humidity. Any book printed on parchment will not last very long in a nuclear desert environment. Parchment also cannot be effectively mass-produced for use in printing. Paper, on the other hand, is resistant to changes in humidity and can stand radical temperature changes (such as passing frequently from a cooler underground metro tunnel to a hot exterior environment). Paper can also be easily produced in quantity, using recycled wood pulp stock (such as "Pre-War Money") and reinforced with cloth fibers (from Pre-War Clothing). Thus paper is essential for producing a book which will survive inside a wastelander's pack for more than a few weeks, and there is no real point to purchasing a "Survival Guide" which will crumble to dust within a few weeks. --Webgiant 07:47, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * "Aha," you say, "but what about the ancient parchments found in library 'special collections'? They lasted a long time!" Well, there's a reason those scrolls, manuscripts, and books continue to last so long: their librarian caretakers keep them in humidity-controlled and temperature-controlled environments, handling them with white cotton gloves, and requiring special permission for outsiders to handle them. The reason we still have them today is that most of them are religious written documents (handled only by the priesthood and only indoors while wearing priestly gloves) and the rest were handled only by the academics who created them in the first place. Most of the "common usage" parchment crafts are long gone precisely because parchment does not survive rough handling. --Webgiant 07:47, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Ooookay, a couple of points: skill books don't crumble into dust, they are simply removed from game. It's a gameplay mechanic, not anything in-universe. Second, there are no printing houses in the Wasteland. Easily the most out-of-place quest in Fallout 3 isn't really a good setting exposition tool. http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/0/08/Personal_Sig_Image.gif Tagaziel (call!) 08:33, January 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) When Bethesda forgets to provide an in-game explanation, there's no way to prove that any made-up in-game explanation is the "wrong" in-game explanation. Skill books crumbling into dust as your character reads them is just as good an in-game explanation as any other in-game explanation. --Webgiant 10:49, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) When Bethesda remembers to provide an in-game explanation (a rare event which is easy to miss...), then that is the right in-game explanation. There are in-game printing houses because Moira uses one to quickly print the first edition of "The Wasteland Survival Guide." She even talks about traders who do this sort of thing. This explanation has been provided by Bethesda so it is the right explanation. --Webgiant 10:49, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

In an earlier version of the Wasteland Survival Guide you had to do the printing yourself at Hubris Comics instead of just Moira magically having the books printed somehow (the remnants of that are still in the quest object in the GECK). Guess they figured they didn't want to make the quest even more lengthy. -- Porter21 (talk) 08:53, January 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well you sure aren't going to be able to force the thicker parchment paper into the conventional paper presses. You're still stuck either finding a vault (as in a large iron box with a lock, and not a Vault with a capital V) full of paper, or making it yourself. And the only guaranteed source of good quality pre-war paper to recycle into printing paper is Pre-War Money. --Webgiant 10:49, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't say anything about parchment, I said leather. Parchment is not tanned, leather is. Being raised by a librarian doesn't really make much of a difference to the argument, so I don't think you need to mention it. Anyway, mass printing is unlikely, how many copies of the Wasteland Survival Guide did you come across? Two or three, I'm guessing.


 * Even if 10% of the Capital Wasteland inhabitants bought the book, that wouldnt really count as mass printing. Is Moira using a modern press with moveable type or otherwise? She could easily be using block printing (yes, even with the remnant of the Hubris comics final part of the quest, which isnt canon due to being cut) which works quite well on leather and cloth, and depending on the volume of printing being done could be suitable.


 * Assuming the books are actually printed on paper or a paper-like substance, you don't need wood to make paper. Any cellulose fiber is suitable, and there are a lot of ways to make that, even with our primitive science. Given that the FO universe SCIENCE! followed a different path to our own, they could have developed a way to make paper substitute from moon cheese for all we know (and theres plenty of that).


 * Finally, how much pre-war money do you think is lying around to make it a guaranteed source? Most of the buildings in earlier FO games were made from a mixture of wood and metal, so there is plenty of raw material right there.


 * I like discussions taken to ridiculous extremes, although this should probably be a forum thread rather than an article talk page. Ishotamaninnewreno 09:30, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * 1. I know you said leather, not parchment, since you weren't raised by a librarian: leather which is prepared to be written on is parchment. Its a common mistake by non-librarians to think that there might be a difference between parchment and "leather used to write upon".  Without preparation, converting it into parchment, leather does not take to small printed designs such as handwriting or even block printing of letters.  Even larger designs, such as tapestries, don't work well on tanned leather.  Like I said, librarians and their spawn know this stuff already, because we help our fathers during summers and breaks to maintain and handle special collections.


 * 2. Mass printing is highly likely, otherwise the copies found in the Mojave Desert would never have been found there. Books which have small print runs rarely have such a wide distribution even in this modern world, and the postwar Wasteland spanning the entire North American continent has no mass book distribution system or system of mail still in place. If Moira's print run had been three or four copies, there would have been inadequate supplies for additional copies to travel across the North American continent.  People owning a copy would know their rarity and would have been unlikely to give up their copies for any price.  A large print run, OTOH, would have meant owners knew they could replace their copies soon, so they would be more likely to trade with traders.  Traders would have a large supply to purchase to take with them across the wilderness, eventually leading to copies in the Mojave Desert.


 * 3. You need wood to make dependable, long-lasting paper. Sure, any cellulose can be used to make paper, but wood pulp paper is stronger than most fibers still available to a postwar society. Ideally any postwar cellulose would be improved on by adding wood fibers into the paper mix.  Cotton fibers would be a nice addition as well, but there aren't as many clothing items as Pre War Money packs, and postwar culture hasn't developed a strong, surviving Naturist Culture yet.  We can argue For All We Know until the cows come home, but in the meantime we can see the 1950s scifi culture of 2077 was still using wood pulp for its books, wood pulp for its magazines, and wood pulp for its money.  If it had a better solution, that solution wasn't mass marketed yet and remains buried in some undiscovered pre-war bunker, or lost entirely in a damaged R&D building.


 * 4. Finally, homes are made from wood which has been exposed to nature, the elements, and often high levels of radiation. As I pointed out before, Pre-War Money, all of it, sat inside metal boxes (safes, cash registers, metal cases, etc.) during the Great War, keeping it safe from the kind of destructive forces all the house wood was exposed to for centuries.  Since there aren't enough pre-war collectors to reduce the supply, and everyone else thinks of the stuff as garbage (hence its availability in many garbage cans), I think the supply of Pre-War Money is quite large.


 * Your comments are quite interesting, but on the whole demonstrate a lack of knowledge about paper types, paper production, and publishing. If you have any related experience, such as being related to librarians and working in libraries for much of your childhood and college life as I have, now would be the time to mention it. --Webgiant 04:20, April 19, 2011 (UTC)


 * I always thought that all of those "ruined book"-type items could be pulped and recycled into new paper, and that's where Moira and the unseen printing traders got their paper. You might only get a little bit of usable pulp from the burned ones, but there are plenty of those lying around to compensate. RolandVH 17:20, December 16, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they're using pre-war money to print things. If you ever trade a decent amount of the stuff, even in-game weeks later it will still be in that trader's inventory. Not only that, but a place like Hubris is bound to have enough random stuff laying around that you could print a few copies of a book on. On a somewhat unrelated note, anyone able to conjure a possible exchange rate between one bottlecap and the USD? My thought is one bottlecap equals roughly ten dollars, if you assume that stack is worth 100 dollars(It's base value being 10 caps). TestECull 16:15, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

I think it's alot more likely that they are breaking it down and reusing it in some fashion then every merchant being an avid money collector, nor every merchant knowing a collector that's wealthy enough to exchange caps for it. Making paper is really very simple, particularly from another source of paper. So, between a hugely surplus collectors item in a world where many are starving and barely scraping by (which sounds rediculous to me) or a means to document your profit margins and what is most valuable at what time of year in what town, and when that shipment of Brahmin meat will go bad, the choice seems very clear. 75.136.193.181 10:17, April 15, 2011 (UTC)

Is important to remember that money is printed on cotton paper, recycling them into books probably won't work. I believe that pre-war money is valued as toilet tissue. Think about it your in the fallout universe whats going to be your first choice to wipe our butt? --LordVukodlak 21:12, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Benny's suit. 21:14, May 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * NCR paper money. Great Mara 21:22, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Locations
I honestly don't believe we need to list every location it can be found at. I think it should be how the Abraxo Cleaner is listed. Listing all location creats clutter.--Kingclyde 23:12, January 31, 2010 (UTC)


 * No, its necessary to list locations with large amounts of Cash Registers or large amounts of Pre-War Money. CheezeWEEPツ 23:20, January 31, 2010 (UTC)
 * Remember to put it in a collapsible frame, then. http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/0/08/Personal_Sig_Image.gif Tagaziel (call!) 08:36, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well if you look at the Abraxo Cleaner page, Porter, Ausir and I came up with that line as a suitable replacement.--Kingclyde 08:39, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * I favor Kingclyde's solution. Avoids clutter, incomplete lists, and remains accurate.--Gothemasticator 09:33, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * But isn't it less useful to the user, if they want to collect them? -132.183.140.139 20:58, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * There are literally hundreds of locations. There is no need to list them when every time you turn around, BAM! there is some pre-war money. --Kingclyde 21:35, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me a location where there a lot of them?
im collecting them and i just want to know where theres alot of them. ive already got the ones in the briefcase from repcon headquatres58.167.13.123 23:42, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * According to the page, you can find plenty at Searchlight Airport, which is south of Camp Searchlight. Yes Man default.png 00:23, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

ive looked there and all i find is 2 trunks full of caps.58.167.13.123 00:41, September 11, 2011 (UTC)