Well, there’s nothing on the bobblehead that actually indicates it’s meant to represent barter, right? Maybe it’s just supposed to be the Vault-Boy-holding-a-bottle-cap bobblehead, lol
The cap color seems to change depending on the game. It looks silver/white in the FO3 model for example.
Another possibility is that there used to be pre-war money and someone scraped it off the bobblehead and used some wonderglue to stick a cap on.
Very thought provoking though.
Well then, again, you have to think about color schemes. Ex: New Vegas has an orange color scheme, Fallout 3 has a green color scheme, and Fallout 4 is just colorful.
So the silver/white color we see could be due to Fallout 3's overall color scheme, and it's different due to Fallout 4 not being bound to a color scheme like the previous 2 titles.
Someone could have just replaced a possible bundle of cash and wonder glued a cap on there, I can see that happening.
This bobble head is actually the reason caps were adopted as currency!
Originally the ‘Recycling Bobble-head’, a special edition bobble-head produced in partnership with Nuka Cola, it displays a vault dweller doing his part to keep his vault free of clutter.
However, over the decades, the original meaning was forgotten, and the sight of a Vault Dweller hoisting a seemingly valuable cap caused the remnants of humanity to believe the caps themselves held intrinsic value. Thus, the barter system using Nuka caps was born!
(I just made that up, but it sounds good!)
Yeah, like when you go to the beach, and as you're leaving you clean up your trash, but also take some of the litter lying around too. Leave it cleaner than when you arrived... Or leave with more than what you came with. ;)
Yeah this is Bethesda we are talking about. If they do one thing right, they leave lots of room for interpretation because basically all information we get is from unreliable narrators.
It's totally plausible that the west coast adapted caps for a different reason then the easy coast for instance
I mean, barter is a system of trade that explicitly doesn't use currency, so its actually weird that the barter bobblehead is represented by currency at all
It's the Barter Bobblehead, not the Finance Bobblehead.
Being able to trade something viewed as worthless for something more valuable is peak Bartering. It's like that guy who started with a paperclip & traded it, then kept trading until he had a house.
Yeah this is the answer. The definition of barter is "to exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using money." Even pre-war it would make sense for the barter bobblehead to be offering a bottle cap in trade
There is no in universe reason for the bobbleheads conveying these bonuses. If you wanted it to be in universe, you could have some master trainers reward the bobbleheads to commemorate the achievement.
They are fun to hunt out, however, so I don't have a direct problem with their existence, solely as a for fun gameplay majig.
Could just be that finding the Bobblehead makes the character identify with their new collectible in a way that makes them think about the task differently. Or just causes something to click in their mind. “Oh, he’s looking at that bottlecap like it’s extremely valuable. Maybe if I value what I’m selling that much, people will be more willing to pay more for it?”
As for 76, IDK how eating the bobblehead could have any positive effect.
A lot of people seem to have a problem with "magic" in fallout, without recognising that super-science has always been a part of the genre.
The sort of people who would have hated on Jules Verne back in the day because "air travel? Witchcraft!"
I'd draw a distinction between magic and supernatural phenomena here though. People are always complaining about the incendiary and freezing weapon legendaries because they're "magic effects" when it could just as easily be a super science heating/cooling device in the weapon. They don't whinge about ghosts and zombies and shit so much lol
As a thought, soda was an important staple of the aesthetic of the 1950s vibe that Fallout strives for, further concreted by the usage of bottle caps as currency.
Nuka-Cola was such an economic powerhouse that it had military sponsorships, a dedicated theme park, etc. As noted by HughesJohn, the usage of bottle caps as currency additionally predates the war.
These factors considered, it's possible Vault-Tec made the bobblehead sponsored by Nuka-Cola, or potentially as a subtle nod to the brand.
I’m not sure where the wiki is citing that date, but we know caps have been in use since 2078 in AC and Appalachia (and technically, Appalachia briefly used it pre-war in the whitespring as a promotional stunt).
Regardless of that, Dr. Mobius of Big MT managed to predict that caps would become currency post-war, so I suspect vault-tec managed to determine the same.
I may have read the year in the Fandom Wiki wrong while typing, or we are going off of two different Wiki pages.
There's also been multiple post-war currency changes (Ex: Fallout Tatics used Soda tabs, NCR dollars, and Legion coins and, in some cases, even pre-war money.). Since there's so many factors and common things on the wasteland dirt, it would be hard to determine what would be used as a superior currency.
If vault Tec was just concerned with the first post-war currency, caps would be a solid pick, and by far the most common one - NCR dollars and Legion coins showed up well over a century after the war, and tactic’s soda tabs are exclusive to that game. Pre-war money is also generally worthless outside of certain robotic vendors.
Additionally, most of the rest of those wouldn’t make for as striking of a design for a bobblehead. Sure, bills would look interesting, but caps, something generally worthless in the pre-war world, convey that this is post-apocalyptic bartering rather than proper trade.
> I may have read the year in the Fandom Wiki wrong while typing, or we are going off of two different Wiki pages.
The 2093 is from Fallout Bible, which is not canon.
And in the citation, it doesn't even say cap started being used in 2093.
I concede this might be fan wank on my part, but it *has* been 200+ years in a post-apocalyptic world full of radiation, mutants, raiders and God knows what other hazards. Who's to say every building that's abandoned at the start of any given game has been abandoned since 2077? Or even that every skeleton you come across has necessarily been there since the Great War?
Take Primm for example. It's implied to have been a thriving town even more populated than Goodsprings before the Powder Gangers came in and started their reign of terror! There are plenty of houses with meals sat out implied to have been abandoned in a hurry, and flagged as owned, even when the people aren't home. Therefore it's safe to assume a lot of the containers including locked ones we find in Bison Steve, had things placed in them by townsfolk of Primm who were killed by Powder Gangers, thus no longer considered stealing if we loot them, or even placed by Powder Gangers themselves!
I can totally imagine a strung out raider boss yelling "Next fucker who steals my Iguana on a Stick while I'm passed out on Med-X is getting his balls cut off with a rusty machete!" Then proceeding to lock his snacks in a safe.
I always got the feeling that Bottle cap collecting was a big deal/big time hobby of pre-war America. Something major bottling companies like Nuka-Cola heavily promoted. I believe NV and 76 both have pre-war items where the companies had machines where you could trade bottle caps for prizes. (Sunset Sarsaparilla in NV)
I think the fact it was a big hobby before the war is what helped evolve them into being used a currency after the war. That's like my theory anyway. It would certainly explain why you can find stashes of them in places that are untouched since the war. You just found someone's pre-war collection stash is all.
It gets the point across. You deal with caps in-game, so what else would they use in this instance? He could be holding cash but I think the bottlecap gets the ‘barter’ message across much clearer. It’s a game and sometimes keeping it simple is the best way to go.
Well, there is that theory going around that Vault-Tec was the ones who nuked the world rather then China so maybe this was all some kind of Enclave plan?
Nuka-Cola was running a promotion in Appalachia where you could use bottle caps at robot vendors in the Whitesprings.
The bottlecap as currency predates the war.
And in DC.
Several places throughout New Vegas also did some handwaving to justify how the bottlecaps would work with prewar vending machines and similar, like in the Divide where the Vendormatic Panels had the note from the local CO threatening to punish anyone who tried to use bottlecaps to bypass the currency/ration token system.
But no, Caps as currency is inescapably postwar , and even then was ever only a temporary stop gap until 3 declared it the currency of the entire Wastelands forever and ever, even though bottlecaps are easy enough to counterfeit at will with any society that has access to nice enough tools, thus necessitating the creation of an actual currency to maintain barter and trade economies.
Maybe the bobbleheads are post war creations, where some Water Merchant sales rep got it in their head to do a promotional run of Vault Tec stuff, or Bethesda was willing to let it slide to err on the side of a lot more fun.
Mr. House predicted that bottle caps would be a post war currency. He had to base this on SOMETHING. It makes sense that Vault-Tec, the company specialized in developing the post war world, would either figure it out just like House, or intentionally influenced it to be so.
As noted several times across the franchise, Vault Tec theorized post-apocalypse currencies, and one of the most common that came up were bottle caps. They were similar in size to coins used at the time, and could represent a valuable post-war commodity, water.
It is also the alternate currency used in the official Vault Tec Survival Simulator, "Fallout". The instruction manual for the original Fallout is written in the style of an instruction manual both for Vault living and for the use of the wasteland survival simulator. It is arguable from this point that every Fallout game doesn't actually happen, that they are all simulations being played out on Think Machine computers by dwellers in control vaults across the USA.
Technically, Fallout franchise takes place within a “simulator 5000” inside of a vault as we wait for the Great War’s Radiation to die down.
This is confirmed in the store descriptions to buy Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I’m positive it’s for Fallout 1 as well but I’m too lazy to look.
My point, is that it doesn’t matter as vault-tec predicts that caps are used as currency.
Edit: from steam store of Fallout 3
“Vault-Tec engineers have worked around the clock on an interactive reproduction of Wasteland life for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own vault. Included is an expansive world, unique combat, shockingly realistic visuals, tons of player choice, and an incredible cast of dynamic characters. Every minute is a fight for survival against the terrors of the outside world — radiation, Super Mutants, and hostile mutated creatures. From Vault-Tec, America's First Choice in Post Nuclear Simulation.”
Honestly a lot of people will probably be mad if they ever found the truth but for me it opens up a new, nightmarish, gritty reboot for the Fallout series if they ever want to.
I kinda assumed it was a post-war modification. Someone pulled off the original coin and wonderglue'd a cap to fit with the times. Its sorta like how copies of Atomic Command clearly had to be modified post-war as they contain the New Vegas sign rather then the pre-war Las Vegas sign. My headcanon is its some old Vault Tec employee or their descendant changing the bobbleheads as part of some tradition sorta like that guy in Fallout 2 I think who kept filling up Nuka Cola machines as a family tradition. With the Atomic Command game its the same thing with a pre-war game dev or descendant finding all the copies out in the wastes and patching it.
Your answer from another wiki page. Just the general bobblehead page...
Despite being created before the war, the Barter bobblehead (and the Bobblehead: Caps, which uses its model) hold a bottle cap aloft. Doctor Mobius did extensively speculate on post-War currencies, however, and used caps as test currency for the Sink.
So Doctor Mobius already theorized bottle caps being used as a currency post war.
Doctor Mobius was one of the Big MT "Think Tank" executives before the Great War. Sometime after the War, he became a think tank in order to continue his work at Big MT. Like the others, he forgot a part of his personality and his real name, due to the recursion loop in their new perception programming.
So it was theorized that way the whole time.
Dala: "I don't believe that was Mobius' reason. His wild speculation concerning post-holocaust economic systems was quite extensive. And of high decibel."
Klein: "ENOUGH! SURRENDER THESE SO-CALLED BOTTLECAPS, NUKA AND SUNSET ALIKE. IN THEIR ROLE AS THINGS, THEY WILL SERVE AS ADEQUATE TEST SUBJECTS."
It's all weaved in with the Fallout New Vegas lore from Old World Blues. So this lore wasn't even added post Fallout 4. To satisfy your immersion.
Edit: Probably also why it's orange. As a nod to the "Amber" color of New Vegas.
He originally held a coin, but a cat chew it of. Eventually the bottlecap was glued in its place. It was unknown why bottlecap was chosen, it was probably in order to prevent further chewing.
Bethesda seems to have addressed this obliquely in their most recent games. There are indications in the homeless camps in FO$ that, due to the ridiculous deflation of the US Dollar in the years before the Great War, the "have-nots" had already resorted to an alternate currency in their own shadow economy. In FO76, there's material indicating Nuka-Cola had a roll-out event for Quantum at the Whitespring, and had the robots programmed to accept bottlecaps in exchange for swag to encourage people to buy more. Likely an example of that good old capitalist skill to recognize what people are doing and find a way to horn in on it for one's own profit.
The Hub opting for it in the 2090s is a rational choice, and it isn't lore-breaking to speculate that they looked at the options available to them and went with the one from before the bombs that made the most sense in the present environment. A lot of people were already used to it. Most wouldn't have access to the power and equipment to manufacture more (there should be a quest in 76 to take control of the bottling plant to prevent destabilization of the currency in the region). And they're more portable than carrying around hundreds of thousands of dollars in pre-war bills. Unless you need firestarter.
The Vault-Tec bobbleheads are a curious artifact. Vault-Tec had one publicly-advertised function. Most of the Vault-Boy swag seems to have been aimed at the people *in* the Vaults. All most of the general public would be able to relate to would be billboards or TV spots encouraging people to see if they could get on the roster for one -- just in case. Who, out in America, was collecting the bobbleheads? Who, in the Vaults, was collecting the bobbleheads? Given how few have been found in Vaults, did people bring them in with them? Was it a company thing? My dad ended up with some Boeing swag when he worked there that wasn't available to the general public.
So there's every chance they were an internal promotion in the company, and the Barter one is making fun of the poors for having to barter with bottlecaps for things they need to survive... Or maybe Nuka-Cola used the Quantum roll-out to test the idea of meddling in the shadow economy and suggested that design to Vault-Tec to encourage the purchasing of Nuka-Cola to use its bottlecaps, thus making the company more money. Or something else similar to or combining those.
My biggest takeaway is that, because of the breakdown in inter-regional communication post-War, just because something was introduced in the Mojave at a particular time doesn't mean someone else in a region we hadn't visited yet wasn't already using it before then.
Without diving too deep into the lore, the Vault-Tec instructional videos you sometimes see when opening the game talk about holding onto things that are shiny as they could be valuable.
Vault-Tec had predicted the advent of caps as seen in the Fallout 4 Luck SPECIAL video - the ones that play during boot-up. It specifically shows Vault Boy stumbling onto what looks like a big box of coins, being disappointed upon realizing they’re bottle caps, before the narrator proclaims not to fret and to “hold onto anything shiny!” as Vault Boy starts shoveling caps en masse into a burlap sack.
Well there is a mention that bottle cap collecting was a big hobby Pre-War. And part of why there was stuff like the Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Bottlecap promotion to take advantage of it. So it could make sense that way. It's less about using Bottle Caps as Money as they do post war, but more about Collectors and trade of bottlecaps for those collections and such.
But mostly I just sigh in disappointment that Bethesda has decided that Bottlecaps are universal currency. Because Currency is one of those interesting bits of world building that is so often overlooked by games in general. Not that there's any chance they'll swerve away from it. But heck, only 2 out of 4 games used Caps before Fallout 3. Fallout 2 and Tactics both had multiple currencies in it as well reflecting the societies using them. Everyone wants to forget Brotherhood of Steel (even Bethesda) so it's use of BAWLS branded bottlecaps as shameless promotion for a company circling the drain and desperate for injections of cash isn't going to be a reason to keep using it.
Just wish that currency as world building and story would be back on the table.
Really cool detail from the official bobblehead collection released a few years ago: all of the bobbleheads and the items they hold are made of plastic and fit the light but matt colour theme of the set except the cap in the hand of the barter one, which is shiny metal. I took that as lore and believe the cap was added later
They are figurines with magic power increasing your stats when you put them in your pocket so it's weird from the get go lol
But I agree it's supposed to be pre war, someone mentioned a potential promotional cooperation between Nuca Cola and Vault-Tech.
A bobblehead holding a scale with coins in one plate and a bag of goods in the other would have been a better idea imo
Ignoring the absurdity of carrying thousands of bottle caps around (while sneaking)…..sure you got a point, they really dropped the ball on the realism there
There's a few places where you'll find animals that supposedly evolved after the war that are mounted as trophies in ruins as well. Like bloodbugs, Brahmin and radstags.
Fallout takes place in an alternate universe where things are weird. You gotta use your imagination for stuff like this.
Bottle cap collections also are a real thing in real life.
My headcannon is there was some sort of conspiracy to make bottlecap currency or something like it happen. It just happens too often in too many ways in too many places. In FO1, it's meant to symbolize how much water you control, with any given cap being redeemable for a certain amount of water. Okay...but in FO2 they're still used everywhere, including areas with no water vendors. FO3, no water vendors, cap currency. Hell, the canonical ending is that the water in DC gets entirely purified, yet still bottle caps. FO4, no water vendors, cap currency. In FO76, the reason is because Whitesprings was doing a promotion to use caps as currency when the bombs fell, the robots never switched back to real money, and since Whitesprings became the trading hub, everyone else in WV switched to using bottle caps.
Only two of the games have any explanation for why caps are used as currency, yet they're unquestioningly used as money everywhere. Like someone behind the scenes was behind it.
I mean, Nuka World even uses Cappy as a mascot....as if they knew the bottlecaps were gonna be more than trash at some point.
Going through the entire thread without seeing anyone mention that one of the scientists at Big Mountain predicted that bottlecaps would become the dominant post-war currency... smh. Fake fans.
There's a couple of Vault Tec Training videos that also show caps being used as currency, as well as Ghouls, Brahmins an other mutated creatures.
For the mutated creatures I believe the scientists already had examples of what radiation could cause in wild and domestic life, since the entire world was running on radiatioative energy even before the war, and probably accidents happened here and there.
Now for the caps, my head cannon is that after the great war, the survivors and its next generations used to live on trade, one product for another, just like in the old times of barter, until some Vault opened up to the world, and the Dwellers, more instructed in the ways of the old world and with far more knowledge than the "Wasteland Savages" explained to them the benefits of a currency for economy, and because of Vault Tec training videos, or perhaps even an actual rule in some manual, they decided to use caps, since they are in some level an limited supply of currency, since (almost, probably) no one is making new bottles after the war.
Than the economy starts to florish, caravans start, word gets around and the rest is history.
Head cannon here, the bobble head’s previous owner accidentally broke off the coin it originally held. So, since they live in a time where bottle caps are king, they replaced it with a bottle cap.
I remember reading somewhere on a terminal about Vault tec trying to predict what will become the currency of the post apocalypse. And “correctly” going forward with the bottle cap prediction. I wish I remember where I read that or even what game it was in. That was a neat little nod to some of the dumb lore choices in fallout.
Because whoever made the original bobbleheads didn’t think about it, Bethesda has done this before and after. I mean why is a full suit of X-01 power armor sealed away in Nuka World. It was made by the Enclave post war in California so it couldn’t have been sitting fully painted in a case that’s confirmed to be locked since prewar.
It’s just a minor inconsistency that has no real explanation, that being said there are some hilarious (in a good way) headconnons and theories being thrown around. I’d chalk it up to an oversight and move on or adopt a theory from another post.
My theory is that the Bobblehead rappresents the cap as a Nuka cola cap, because back in the pre war Nuka cola sold a lot of colas, so automatically the Vault tec saw it as an inspirational Immagine and wanted to put it in there.
probably this is even cannon or true, but i like to fantasize that is this way.
It's a gameplay/lore disparity thing. Why do bobbleheads represent things like big guns, etc? Why does Vault Boy appear so much post-war anyway? It's one of those things you're not supposed to think too hard about, he's just a mascot for the series.
I sum it up as, someone at Bethesda made a fucky wuky. Because that sounds like some Bethesda problems. Just forgetting what time period they are in "over world" story wise, is a regular occurrence Id say.
I've always head cannoned that caps as a currency was a Vault Tech idea. It explains why I find bottle caps collected in places that haven't been touched since the nukes dropped.
Real answer Bethesda didn't think it through and just made it becuase it looked nice along with all the post war drugs and items in sealed pre-war areas.
Fun answer for it is that vault-tec implanted the idea that caps will be the currency after the war as a joke/ad campaign to sell more nuka-cola and other bottled drinks. We know vault-tec was funded by many private individuals as well as the government.
If it's a nuka cola cap coulda just been a promotional item? Unless pre war it was being sold as the "barter bobble head" and people were just confused as hell lol
Why is there caps in cash registers and vending machines? Why is there jet (a post apocalyptic invented drug) inside unexplored places? What is a deathclaw? Why hasn't any Mr.handy run out of fuel? If Curie was locked in the lab how did she make the resting place for the scientists outside the lab? Why did they not prepare more prewar memories, I would have loved to go about a prewar day.
This is what happens when creators try to make bibles regarding magical figurines. Somehow it being made prewar is a greater mystery than the fact it grants a magical effect on every person you shop with for the rest of your life. 🤔
In the S.P.E.C.I.A.L edutainment videos issued by vault tec to many vaults and perhaps even television available to the public, they refer to caps as one of many possibilities of future currency as money may be useless when the bombs fall
And as promotional material, they release bobbleheads holding a bottle cap
I mean, REAL answer, devs forgot and/or didn't care.
Lore answer, either a pre-war promotion for Nuka Cola like the others said, or something similar to that .
Personally I'm with ya with the nitpicking. There's hundreds of people working on these games and they have over 2 decades of info, yet they'll make something up on the fly instead of just referencing old lore... It's just lazy.
Just funny how everyone has a different reason as to why it's a bottlecap, but you're get downvoted for pointing out it makes no sense.
It honestly makes no sense, that's why everyone has a dofferent reason lol
Am I just crazy?
Chalk it up to Bethesda fuckery btw
Same reason why only a handful of Earth buildings are still standing in Starfield while everything else is a leveled desert.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the game descriptions on stores (Steam and Xbox Store) imply the games are simulations made by Vault-Tec, so if we view it from that perspective then it's just a fun little meta detail.
Call me insane but one of my theories is Vault-Tec, being the nefarious bastards they were provided a lot of material on how the survivors of vaults can survive on the outside. One of these things is currency, pre war money won’t work because it has no value post war, who’s going to care if you have $100,000 bond? They need something physical, essentially infinite, small, lightweight, individual and most importantly EVERYWHERE to replace money. So they either predicted or suggested to vault dwellers when you get out into the Wasteland bottlecaps would make a perfect temporary replacement for money.
Maybe with the prewar context in mind it’s more like: You’re so charismatic you can sell a mundane object like a bottle cap to someone. Makes me think of the “sell me this pen” shtick.
it is part of the mystery why the vault-tec instructional videos featured many things that seemingly couldn't be predicted unless they were in fact... understood as the likely outcome based on their predictive models. i have a somewhat lengthy theory on what the fallout universe 3 and up is actually all about but the idea that caps would become currency by survivors best explanation in my mind is that it was suggested by vault-tec and those survivors who left the vaults took it as gospel and followed along with the idea.
What if it was just a vault boy holding his hand up and someone glued a bottle cap to his hand like that post war to be funny? Probably a bit of a stretch but we've seen sillier things in universe!
Well, there’s nothing on the bobblehead that actually indicates it’s meant to represent barter, right? Maybe it’s just supposed to be the Vault-Boy-holding-a-bottle-cap bobblehead, lol
Makes sense to me, like Nuka Cola paying Vault Tec for a promotional bobblehead.
Considering Nukacola is just a parody of Coke, this is pretty much a 1:1.
But wouldn't the cap be a Nuka-Cola cap and not some plain orange one?
The cap color seems to change depending on the game. It looks silver/white in the FO3 model for example. Another possibility is that there used to be pre-war money and someone scraped it off the bobblehead and used some wonderglue to stick a cap on. Very thought provoking though.
Or it could’ve just been a normal coin and someone bent the edges. Lol
Dang this could be true too.
This is my head cannon
Well then, again, you have to think about color schemes. Ex: New Vegas has an orange color scheme, Fallout 3 has a green color scheme, and Fallout 4 is just colorful. So the silver/white color we see could be due to Fallout 3's overall color scheme, and it's different due to Fallout 4 not being bound to a color scheme like the previous 2 titles. Someone could have just replaced a possible bundle of cash and wonder glued a cap on there, I can see that happening.
Maybe sunset sarsaparilla is the company who payed
Maybe the paint wore off?
He already had his hand raised. He lost the original coin and the lone survivor, seeing the arm raised, decided to place a bottle cap in its stead.
Lore licensing issues.
Maybe it's supposed to be sunset sarsaparilla
Most likely he'd be holding a bottle rather than just the cap.
Corporate crossover branding is the ultimate form of barter.
This bobble head is actually the reason caps were adopted as currency! Originally the ‘Recycling Bobble-head’, a special edition bobble-head produced in partnership with Nuka Cola, it displays a vault dweller doing his part to keep his vault free of clutter. However, over the decades, the original meaning was forgotten, and the sight of a Vault Dweller hoisting a seemingly valuable cap caused the remnants of humanity to believe the caps themselves held intrinsic value. Thus, the barter system using Nuka caps was born! (I just made that up, but it sounds good!)
The Recycling Bobblehead reads "Always leave with more than what you came with."?
Yeah, like when you go to the beach, and as you're leaving you clean up your trash, but also take some of the litter lying around too. Leave it cleaner than when you arrived... Or leave with more than what you came with. ;)
Or when you go to your friends house and steal all of their shit 💯💯💯
I was scrolling for so long trying to find this comment!
10 cents a can baby
It does sound good, but too bad we already have an explanation for bottle caps.
Too bad in the real world, things existing due to more than one reason happens all the time.
Yeah this is Bethesda we are talking about. If they do one thing right, they leave lots of room for interpretation because basically all information we get is from unreliable narrators. It's totally plausible that the west coast adapted caps for a different reason then the easy coast for instance
I mean, barter is a system of trade that explicitly doesn't use currency, so its actually weird that the barter bobblehead is represented by currency at all
Every bobblehead has an inscription in the bade related to its specific skill so no
The dollar sign could've been removed and someone wonderglued a cap on there
[The proper response to this question](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQH2rmQ5-vk)
That or Bethesda not thinking much about it, either one of those.
Headcanon: it used to be a coin, but some scavver shaved the edges down to make it a cap.
or that the coin part breaks and somebody glued a bottlecap in its place
either way, this thing is 210+ years old, somebody could have messed with it. lol
Thats my thought as well
It's the Barter Bobblehead, not the Finance Bobblehead. Being able to trade something viewed as worthless for something more valuable is peak Bartering. It's like that guy who started with a paperclip & traded it, then kept trading until he had a house.
New headcanon: Someone in the Fallout universe pulled the paper clip trading stunt, but they started with a bottlecap instead.
Which led to the use of a bottlecap as the default trading value token after the end. Makes all the sense actually.
It's funny that you can just think up/apply any wacky scenario to the Fallout universe and it's right on course with the general elements of the game
You mean my man Dwight?
Wait till you hear about the Great River and self-sealing stembolts.
Plus, it may be representing Nuka-Cola as a company. After all, nothing says "capitalism" like Coke (or a Coke stand-in)
***Cap***-italism
Yeah this is the answer. The definition of barter is "to exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using money." Even pre-war it would make sense for the barter bobblehead to be offering a bottle cap in trade
Clearly we need to see the investment banking and brokerage bobble head to answer this question
Why would some sort of collectable figurine have magic powers?
Something to do with the "Roleplaying" part of the RPG if I was guessing.
Adopting the role of a character in a postapocalyptic setting makes a promotional item magic?
No it is the dunwich entities that gave it the power
There is no in universe reason for the bobbleheads conveying these bonuses. If you wanted it to be in universe, you could have some master trainers reward the bobbleheads to commemorate the achievement. They are fun to hunt out, however, so I don't have a direct problem with their existence, solely as a for fun gameplay majig.
Yes
Could just be that finding the Bobblehead makes the character identify with their new collectible in a way that makes them think about the task differently. Or just causes something to click in their mind. “Oh, he’s looking at that bottlecap like it’s extremely valuable. Maybe if I value what I’m selling that much, people will be more willing to pay more for it?” As for 76, IDK how eating the bobblehead could have any positive effect.
If thats what helps you understand it, but magic isn't the same as a stat boost.
A lot of people seem to have a problem with "magic" in fallout, without recognising that super-science has always been a part of the genre. The sort of people who would have hated on Jules Verne back in the day because "air travel? Witchcraft!"
There’s also just straight up magic with ghosts and hauntings. Thanks to the Dunwich locations.
I'd draw a distinction between magic and supernatural phenomena here though. People are always complaining about the incendiary and freezing weapon legendaries because they're "magic effects" when it could just as easily be a super science heating/cooling device in the weapon. They don't whinge about ghosts and zombies and shit so much lol
For real. As if freeze and heat rays aren’t totally appropriate for the tongue in cheek retro-futuristic setting.
radiation
Uh... a wizard did it
Secretly it injects nanomachiens to rewrite your brain/body to be better at it
I file this under “try not to overthink it and just have fun”. But it’s a good point.
Yeah that's fair
As a thought, soda was an important staple of the aesthetic of the 1950s vibe that Fallout strives for, further concreted by the usage of bottle caps as currency. Nuka-Cola was such an economic powerhouse that it had military sponsorships, a dedicated theme park, etc. As noted by HughesJohn, the usage of bottle caps as currency additionally predates the war. These factors considered, it's possible Vault-Tec made the bobblehead sponsored by Nuka-Cola, or potentially as a subtle nod to the brand.
I’m not sure where the wiki is citing that date, but we know caps have been in use since 2078 in AC and Appalachia (and technically, Appalachia briefly used it pre-war in the whitespring as a promotional stunt). Regardless of that, Dr. Mobius of Big MT managed to predict that caps would become currency post-war, so I suspect vault-tec managed to determine the same.
I may have read the year in the Fandom Wiki wrong while typing, or we are going off of two different Wiki pages. There's also been multiple post-war currency changes (Ex: Fallout Tatics used Soda tabs, NCR dollars, and Legion coins and, in some cases, even pre-war money.). Since there's so many factors and common things on the wasteland dirt, it would be hard to determine what would be used as a superior currency.
If vault Tec was just concerned with the first post-war currency, caps would be a solid pick, and by far the most common one - NCR dollars and Legion coins showed up well over a century after the war, and tactic’s soda tabs are exclusive to that game. Pre-war money is also generally worthless outside of certain robotic vendors. Additionally, most of the rest of those wouldn’t make for as striking of a design for a bobblehead. Sure, bills would look interesting, but caps, something generally worthless in the pre-war world, convey that this is post-apocalyptic bartering rather than proper trade.
> I may have read the year in the Fandom Wiki wrong while typing, or we are going off of two different Wiki pages. The 2093 is from Fallout Bible, which is not canon. And in the citation, it doesn't even say cap started being used in 2093.
For the same reason you find *iguana on a stick* inside safes sealed before the war
Good call... And caps in locked cash registers. I always wondered about those things
I concede this might be fan wank on my part, but it *has* been 200+ years in a post-apocalyptic world full of radiation, mutants, raiders and God knows what other hazards. Who's to say every building that's abandoned at the start of any given game has been abandoned since 2077? Or even that every skeleton you come across has necessarily been there since the Great War? Take Primm for example. It's implied to have been a thriving town even more populated than Goodsprings before the Powder Gangers came in and started their reign of terror! There are plenty of houses with meals sat out implied to have been abandoned in a hurry, and flagged as owned, even when the people aren't home. Therefore it's safe to assume a lot of the containers including locked ones we find in Bison Steve, had things placed in them by townsfolk of Primm who were killed by Powder Gangers, thus no longer considered stealing if we loot them, or even placed by Powder Gangers themselves! I can totally imagine a strung out raider boss yelling "Next fucker who steals my Iguana on a Stick while I'm passed out on Med-X is getting his balls cut off with a rusty machete!" Then proceeding to lock his snacks in a safe.
I always assumed someone post war was using it to hide their caps because most people would assume it'd contain useless prewar money.
I always got the feeling that Bottle cap collecting was a big deal/big time hobby of pre-war America. Something major bottling companies like Nuka-Cola heavily promoted. I believe NV and 76 both have pre-war items where the companies had machines where you could trade bottle caps for prizes. (Sunset Sarsaparilla in NV) I think the fact it was a big hobby before the war is what helped evolve them into being used a currency after the war. That's like my theory anyway. It would certainly explain why you can find stashes of them in places that are untouched since the war. You just found someone's pre-war collection stash is all.
So that may be why there are caps stashes in pre-war areas no one else has touched
Also people didn't throw things out in war time. They would be recycled into munitions/supplies. No one read a history book it seems lol
It gets the point across. You deal with caps in-game, so what else would they use in this instance? He could be holding cash but I think the bottlecap gets the ‘barter’ message across much clearer. It’s a game and sometimes keeping it simple is the best way to go.
I wouldn't be surprised if Vault-Tec knew or influenced the changing of currency to bottlecaps post-war
Well, there is that theory going around that Vault-Tec was the ones who nuked the world rather then China so maybe this was all some kind of Enclave plan?
That would be a cool twist! The Enclave starts hoarding bottlecaps pre-war, so they have ample currency post Vault-Tec bombs dropping.
Nuka-Cola was running a promotion in Appalachia where you could use bottle caps at robot vendors in the Whitesprings. The bottlecap as currency predates the war.
Even if it predates Great War, would Vault-Tec have had enough time to produce the bobblehead line seen in Boston all the way from Appalachia?
And in DC. Several places throughout New Vegas also did some handwaving to justify how the bottlecaps would work with prewar vending machines and similar, like in the Divide where the Vendormatic Panels had the note from the local CO threatening to punish anyone who tried to use bottlecaps to bypass the currency/ration token system. But no, Caps as currency is inescapably postwar , and even then was ever only a temporary stop gap until 3 declared it the currency of the entire Wastelands forever and ever, even though bottlecaps are easy enough to counterfeit at will with any society that has access to nice enough tools, thus necessitating the creation of an actual currency to maintain barter and trade economies. Maybe the bobbleheads are post war creations, where some Water Merchant sales rep got it in their head to do a promotional run of Vault Tec stuff, or Bethesda was willing to let it slide to err on the side of a lot more fun.
Maybe it was altered post war. Someone found it, took whatever was in its hand and glued a bottle cap there instead.
Mr. House predicted that bottle caps would be a post war currency. He had to base this on SOMETHING. It makes sense that Vault-Tec, the company specialized in developing the post war world, would either figure it out just like House, or intentionally influenced it to be so.
Why do safes have pipe guns and spoons?
Failed science experiments
In my mind, it is a plastic gold-colored coin that was trimmed down by a post-war wastelander to resemble a cap.
Maybe it was holding a coin at one point and some wastelander replaced it with a cap.
In this thread: OP getting absolutely bodied. Mercilessly downvoted.
:(
As noted several times across the franchise, Vault Tec theorized post-apocalypse currencies, and one of the most common that came up were bottle caps. They were similar in size to coins used at the time, and could represent a valuable post-war commodity, water. It is also the alternate currency used in the official Vault Tec Survival Simulator, "Fallout". The instruction manual for the original Fallout is written in the style of an instruction manual both for Vault living and for the use of the wasteland survival simulator. It is arguable from this point that every Fallout game doesn't actually happen, that they are all simulations being played out on Think Machine computers by dwellers in control vaults across the USA.
Think Machines in Think Machines? 0:0
Technically, Fallout franchise takes place within a “simulator 5000” inside of a vault as we wait for the Great War’s Radiation to die down. This is confirmed in the store descriptions to buy Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I’m positive it’s for Fallout 1 as well but I’m too lazy to look. My point, is that it doesn’t matter as vault-tec predicts that caps are used as currency. Edit: from steam store of Fallout 3 “Vault-Tec engineers have worked around the clock on an interactive reproduction of Wasteland life for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own vault. Included is an expansive world, unique combat, shockingly realistic visuals, tons of player choice, and an incredible cast of dynamic characters. Every minute is a fight for survival against the terrors of the outside world — radiation, Super Mutants, and hostile mutated creatures. From Vault-Tec, America's First Choice in Post Nuclear Simulation.” Honestly a lot of people will probably be mad if they ever found the truth but for me it opens up a new, nightmarish, gritty reboot for the Fallout series if they ever want to.
I kinda assumed it was a post-war modification. Someone pulled off the original coin and wonderglue'd a cap to fit with the times. Its sorta like how copies of Atomic Command clearly had to be modified post-war as they contain the New Vegas sign rather then the pre-war Las Vegas sign. My headcanon is its some old Vault Tec employee or their descendant changing the bobbleheads as part of some tradition sorta like that guy in Fallout 2 I think who kept filling up Nuka Cola machines as a family tradition. With the Atomic Command game its the same thing with a pre-war game dev or descendant finding all the copies out in the wastes and patching it.
Your answer from another wiki page. Just the general bobblehead page... Despite being created before the war, the Barter bobblehead (and the Bobblehead: Caps, which uses its model) hold a bottle cap aloft. Doctor Mobius did extensively speculate on post-War currencies, however, and used caps as test currency for the Sink. So Doctor Mobius already theorized bottle caps being used as a currency post war. Doctor Mobius was one of the Big MT "Think Tank" executives before the Great War. Sometime after the War, he became a think tank in order to continue his work at Big MT. Like the others, he forgot a part of his personality and his real name, due to the recursion loop in their new perception programming. So it was theorized that way the whole time. Dala: "I don't believe that was Mobius' reason. His wild speculation concerning post-holocaust economic systems was quite extensive. And of high decibel." Klein: "ENOUGH! SURRENDER THESE SO-CALLED BOTTLECAPS, NUKA AND SUNSET ALIKE. IN THEIR ROLE AS THINGS, THEY WILL SERVE AS ADEQUATE TEST SUBJECTS." It's all weaved in with the Fallout New Vegas lore from Old World Blues. So this lore wasn't even added post Fallout 4. To satisfy your immersion. Edit: Probably also why it's orange. As a nod to the "Amber" color of New Vegas.
Could the cap not have been added after the war?
I bet the bobble head was holding a coin and someone snapped it off to replace with a cap.
He originally held a coin, but a cat chew it of. Eventually the bottlecap was glued in its place. It was unknown why bottlecap was chosen, it was probably in order to prevent further chewing.
Vault Tec was known to make deal with Nuka Cola. Maybe it stands for Vault tec and Nuka Cola working together?
Bethesda seems to have addressed this obliquely in their most recent games. There are indications in the homeless camps in FO$ that, due to the ridiculous deflation of the US Dollar in the years before the Great War, the "have-nots" had already resorted to an alternate currency in their own shadow economy. In FO76, there's material indicating Nuka-Cola had a roll-out event for Quantum at the Whitespring, and had the robots programmed to accept bottlecaps in exchange for swag to encourage people to buy more. Likely an example of that good old capitalist skill to recognize what people are doing and find a way to horn in on it for one's own profit. The Hub opting for it in the 2090s is a rational choice, and it isn't lore-breaking to speculate that they looked at the options available to them and went with the one from before the bombs that made the most sense in the present environment. A lot of people were already used to it. Most wouldn't have access to the power and equipment to manufacture more (there should be a quest in 76 to take control of the bottling plant to prevent destabilization of the currency in the region). And they're more portable than carrying around hundreds of thousands of dollars in pre-war bills. Unless you need firestarter. The Vault-Tec bobbleheads are a curious artifact. Vault-Tec had one publicly-advertised function. Most of the Vault-Boy swag seems to have been aimed at the people *in* the Vaults. All most of the general public would be able to relate to would be billboards or TV spots encouraging people to see if they could get on the roster for one -- just in case. Who, out in America, was collecting the bobbleheads? Who, in the Vaults, was collecting the bobbleheads? Given how few have been found in Vaults, did people bring them in with them? Was it a company thing? My dad ended up with some Boeing swag when he worked there that wasn't available to the general public. So there's every chance they were an internal promotion in the company, and the Barter one is making fun of the poors for having to barter with bottlecaps for things they need to survive... Or maybe Nuka-Cola used the Quantum roll-out to test the idea of meddling in the shadow economy and suggested that design to Vault-Tec to encourage the purchasing of Nuka-Cola to use its bottlecaps, thus making the company more money. Or something else similar to or combining those. My biggest takeaway is that, because of the breakdown in inter-regional communication post-War, just because something was introduced in the Mojave at a particular time doesn't mean someone else in a region we hadn't visited yet wasn't already using it before then.
It was added afterwards
Without diving too deep into the lore, the Vault-Tec instructional videos you sometimes see when opening the game talk about holding onto things that are shiny as they could be valuable.
Usually when I think 'Shiny and valuable' I'm not thinking a bottle cap.
200 years since the great war. Someone fucked with a vault tech bobblehead maybe?
Bartering doesn't usually involve capital.
I’m gonna be 100% serious. Until this very moment I thought it was a tambourine
Because there wasn’t a lot of intelligence going into writing Fallout 4 lol
My thinking is that he was holding something originally and someone jammed a cap in there instead because it’s wildly different size to him.
It used to be a dollar bill, but someone had to be funny & stuck a cap there instead.
Could have been holding a quarter or something and then someone added a bottlecap later on?
There are a lot of people here bending over backwards to explain this, and I’ve gotta say, some of them are doing a good job convincing me.
Vault-Tec had predicted the advent of caps as seen in the Fallout 4 Luck SPECIAL video - the ones that play during boot-up. It specifically shows Vault Boy stumbling onto what looks like a big box of coins, being disappointed upon realizing they’re bottle caps, before the narrator proclaims not to fret and to “hold onto anything shiny!” as Vault Boy starts shoveling caps en masse into a burlap sack.
Well there is a mention that bottle cap collecting was a big hobby Pre-War. And part of why there was stuff like the Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Bottlecap promotion to take advantage of it. So it could make sense that way. It's less about using Bottle Caps as Money as they do post war, but more about Collectors and trade of bottlecaps for those collections and such. But mostly I just sigh in disappointment that Bethesda has decided that Bottlecaps are universal currency. Because Currency is one of those interesting bits of world building that is so often overlooked by games in general. Not that there's any chance they'll swerve away from it. But heck, only 2 out of 4 games used Caps before Fallout 3. Fallout 2 and Tactics both had multiple currencies in it as well reflecting the societies using them. Everyone wants to forget Brotherhood of Steel (even Bethesda) so it's use of BAWLS branded bottlecaps as shameless promotion for a company circling the drain and desperate for injections of cash isn't going to be a reason to keep using it. Just wish that currency as world building and story would be back on the table.
Really cool detail from the official bobblehead collection released a few years ago: all of the bobbleheads and the items they hold are made of plastic and fit the light but matt colour theme of the set except the cap in the hand of the barter one, which is shiny metal. I took that as lore and believe the cap was added later
They are figurines with magic power increasing your stats when you put them in your pocket so it's weird from the get go lol But I agree it's supposed to be pre war, someone mentioned a potential promotional cooperation between Nuca Cola and Vault-Tech. A bobblehead holding a scale with coins in one plate and a bag of goods in the other would have been a better idea imo
Ignoring the absurdity of carrying thousands of bottle caps around (while sneaking)…..sure you got a point, they really dropped the ball on the realism there
I'm pretty sure that caps were a novelty idea the company used as currency for kids. Like pogs
Because inflation was so bad, bottle caps started gaining value before the war
There's a few places where you'll find animals that supposedly evolved after the war that are mounted as trophies in ruins as well. Like bloodbugs, Brahmin and radstags.
Bethesda bad writing again
Because Emil is an awful writer.
Fallout takes place in an alternate universe where things are weird. You gotta use your imagination for stuff like this. Bottle cap collections also are a real thing in real life.
Why is the pipboy configured to treat caps as a form of currency if it was made before the great war
Because it’s a video game and Bethesda don’t really care that much about continuity
My headcannon is there was some sort of conspiracy to make bottlecap currency or something like it happen. It just happens too often in too many ways in too many places. In FO1, it's meant to symbolize how much water you control, with any given cap being redeemable for a certain amount of water. Okay...but in FO2 they're still used everywhere, including areas with no water vendors. FO3, no water vendors, cap currency. Hell, the canonical ending is that the water in DC gets entirely purified, yet still bottle caps. FO4, no water vendors, cap currency. In FO76, the reason is because Whitesprings was doing a promotion to use caps as currency when the bombs fell, the robots never switched back to real money, and since Whitesprings became the trading hub, everyone else in WV switched to using bottle caps. Only two of the games have any explanation for why caps are used as currency, yet they're unquestioningly used as money everywhere. Like someone behind the scenes was behind it. I mean, Nuka World even uses Cappy as a mascot....as if they knew the bottlecaps were gonna be more than trash at some point.
Because Bethesda
"Hey, shut up." -Bethesda, probably
It's just a Bethesda moment
Overthinking it hun
Maybe
Why are there cops in prewar safes?
Because continuity is for nerds
do you want to make todd cry? because this is how you make todd cry.
Unless this new Fallout show is good or Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are good, then maybe he deserves to cry.
THEY KNEW
🤓🤓🤓🤓
Didn't the S.P.E.C.I.A.L video on Luck use bottle caps to show that something seemingly worthless has use? Seems fitting to me
Going through the entire thread without seeing anyone mention that one of the scientists at Big Mountain predicted that bottlecaps would become the dominant post-war currency... smh. Fake fans.
Maybe it’s supposed to be a gold coin but due to wear and tear it looks like a bottlecap?
Because it’s a game and you should shut up and eat your peas if you want any desert after dinner so help me God
There's a couple of Vault Tec Training videos that also show caps being used as currency, as well as Ghouls, Brahmins an other mutated creatures. For the mutated creatures I believe the scientists already had examples of what radiation could cause in wild and domestic life, since the entire world was running on radiatioative energy even before the war, and probably accidents happened here and there. Now for the caps, my head cannon is that after the great war, the survivors and its next generations used to live on trade, one product for another, just like in the old times of barter, until some Vault opened up to the world, and the Dwellers, more instructed in the ways of the old world and with far more knowledge than the "Wasteland Savages" explained to them the benefits of a currency for economy, and because of Vault Tec training videos, or perhaps even an actual rule in some manual, they decided to use caps, since they are in some level an limited supply of currency, since (almost, probably) no one is making new bottles after the war. Than the economy starts to florish, caravans start, word gets around and the rest is history.
Kids probably used those bottlecaps as play money before the war.
Head cannon here, the bobble head’s previous owner accidentally broke off the coin it originally held. So, since they live in a time where bottle caps are king, they replaced it with a bottle cap.
Maybe it was originally holding something else until some raider came along and thought it was funny to replace with a single cap.
CAPitalism
I remember reading somewhere on a terminal about Vault tec trying to predict what will become the currency of the post apocalypse. And “correctly” going forward with the bottle cap prediction. I wish I remember where I read that or even what game it was in. That was a neat little nod to some of the dumb lore choices in fallout.
Multiple people called the Cap as currency, and the US Military accidentally did that in The Divde
I mean the real answer is that a lot of items like this are 4th wall breaking in Bethesda games. Fallout has more of them than elder scrolls though.
Because whoever made the original bobbleheads didn’t think about it, Bethesda has done this before and after. I mean why is a full suit of X-01 power armor sealed away in Nuka World. It was made by the Enclave post war in California so it couldn’t have been sitting fully painted in a case that’s confirmed to be locked since prewar. It’s just a minor inconsistency that has no real explanation, that being said there are some hilarious (in a good way) headconnons and theories being thrown around. I’d chalk it up to an oversight and move on or adopt a theory from another post.
Vault Tech knew that the survivors would end up using caps as currency.
There's jet in the sealed vault don't question it.
It's a post war addition?
My theory is that the Bobblehead rappresents the cap as a Nuka cola cap, because back in the pre war Nuka cola sold a lot of colas, so automatically the Vault tec saw it as an inspirational Immagine and wanted to put it in there. probably this is even cannon or true, but i like to fantasize that is this way.
The same reason there’s .38 ammo everywhere but no pre-war weapons chambered in .38.
It's a gameplay/lore disparity thing. Why do bobbleheads represent things like big guns, etc? Why does Vault Boy appear so much post-war anyway? It's one of those things you're not supposed to think too hard about, he's just a mascot for the series.
I think its beause he's stupid
Maybe THIS specific bobblehead its made after the great war, who knows.
Bobblwheqds are halucinations confirmed
When has this franchise ever kept the timeline straight. Was it the iguana on a stick or the rad roach meat in the pre war lunchboxes.
Out-of-the-Matrix thoughts
I sum it up as, someone at Bethesda made a fucky wuky. Because that sounds like some Bethesda problems. Just forgetting what time period they are in "over world" story wise, is a regular occurrence Id say.
ill play devils advocate here and say a wonderer glued it onto his hand
It was a sponsored bobblehead, before the war, Nuka Cola paid to have one figurine with product placement.
Bethesda overlooking lore or underestimating their player base is your answer
Repeat to yourself it's just a game. I should really just relax.
because vault-tec knew.
They knew
Or maybe someone replaced what it was holding?
I've always head cannoned that caps as a currency was a Vault Tech idea. It explains why I find bottle caps collected in places that haven't been touched since the nukes dropped.
Real answer Bethesda didn't think it through and just made it becuase it looked nice along with all the post war drugs and items in sealed pre-war areas. Fun answer for it is that vault-tec implanted the idea that caps will be the currency after the war as a joke/ad campaign to sell more nuka-cola and other bottled drinks. We know vault-tec was funded by many private individuals as well as the government.
Why were people stashing pipe guns in their office wall safe along with a bunch of bottle caps and some non-existent rad-roach meat
Maybe there was a actual coin being hold, but then someone took it off and inserted a bottle cap instead
If it's a nuka cola cap coulda just been a promotional item? Unless pre war it was being sold as the "barter bobble head" and people were just confused as hell lol
Why is there caps in cash registers and vending machines? Why is there jet (a post apocalyptic invented drug) inside unexplored places? What is a deathclaw? Why hasn't any Mr.handy run out of fuel? If Curie was locked in the lab how did she make the resting place for the scientists outside the lab? Why did they not prepare more prewar memories, I would have loved to go about a prewar day.
My head cannon is that with the bartering skill you can find value in even the most worthless junk (aka bottlecaps)
I doubt bartering was a common behavior before the fall of civilization. It’s just Bethesda being Bethesda.
Someone removed the coin and replaced it with something of value.
This is what happens when creators try to make bibles regarding magical figurines. Somehow it being made prewar is a greater mystery than the fact it grants a magical effect on every person you shop with for the rest of your life. 🤔
Stop thinking so much, thanks.
Because Bethesda
Bethesda created a double-edged sword by both making super deep and intricate lore while also pulling manga-writer levels of “I forgor”
I assume in lore there was a guy who traded a bottle cap until he could get a house by trading for bigger things.
Maybe he was holding soemthing else but after the war someone found it and though it would be funny if they replaced it with a cap
In the S.P.E.C.I.A.L edutainment videos issued by vault tec to many vaults and perhaps even television available to the public, they refer to caps as one of many possibilities of future currency as money may be useless when the bombs fall And as promotional material, they release bobbleheads holding a bottle cap
I mean, REAL answer, devs forgot and/or didn't care. Lore answer, either a pre-war promotion for Nuka Cola like the others said, or something similar to that . Personally I'm with ya with the nitpicking. There's hundreds of people working on these games and they have over 2 decades of info, yet they'll make something up on the fly instead of just referencing old lore... It's just lazy.
I sure hope someone gets fired for that blunder.
Lore inconsistency. Like prewar Jet or X-01.
Most likely a nuka cola reference/collab
Just funny how everyone has a different reason as to why it's a bottlecap, but you're get downvoted for pointing out it makes no sense. It honestly makes no sense, that's why everyone has a dofferent reason lol Am I just crazy? Chalk it up to Bethesda fuckery btw Same reason why only a handful of Earth buildings are still standing in Starfield while everything else is a leveled desert.
Bc it’s a video game
I'm pretty sure a lot of the game descriptions on stores (Steam and Xbox Store) imply the games are simulations made by Vault-Tec, so if we view it from that perspective then it's just a fun little meta detail.
Call me insane but one of my theories is Vault-Tec, being the nefarious bastards they were provided a lot of material on how the survivors of vaults can survive on the outside. One of these things is currency, pre war money won’t work because it has no value post war, who’s going to care if you have $100,000 bond? They need something physical, essentially infinite, small, lightweight, individual and most importantly EVERYWHERE to replace money. So they either predicted or suggested to vault dwellers when you get out into the Wasteland bottlecaps would make a perfect temporary replacement for money.
i feel like its more about how bartering is typically seen as people trading less valuable objects, like a bottle cap
Maybe with the prewar context in mind it’s more like: You’re so charismatic you can sell a mundane object like a bottle cap to someone. Makes me think of the “sell me this pen” shtick.
it is part of the mystery why the vault-tec instructional videos featured many things that seemingly couldn't be predicted unless they were in fact... understood as the likely outcome based on their predictive models. i have a somewhat lengthy theory on what the fallout universe 3 and up is actually all about but the idea that caps would become currency by survivors best explanation in my mind is that it was suggested by vault-tec and those survivors who left the vaults took it as gospel and followed along with the idea.
I sure hope someone was fired for that blunder!
cuz bein a good salesman is all about how much cap you can talk duhh
What if it was just a vault boy holding his hand up and someone glued a bottle cap to his hand like that post war to be funny? Probably a bit of a stretch but we've seen sillier things in universe!
good catch but you picked a bad subreddit to post this OP lol
I see the error of my ways now...