Bottle caps
From The Vault
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Bottle Caps are the standard currency in the first Fallout game. In Fallout 2 regular money has been introduced and bottlecaps have been rendered useless and can only be found in Broken Hills. Bottle caps make a return as the standard currency of the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3. In addition to bottlecaps, a form of pre-war currency (most likely American Dollars) can also be found in the ruins of DC which can then be sold to merchants in return for bottle caps. Bottle Caps can also be put to use in weapon form as one of the major components of a Bottlecap Mine.
Bottle caps are backed by The Hub merchants in the Core Region. The reasoning for their support is that the technology to manufacture bottle caps and paint the surface has been lost in the Great War, which would greatly limit any counterfeiting efforts. Secondly, there is a limited number of bottle caps, which would serve to preserve their value to some degree. There is no explanation whatsoever given for the use of bottlecaps in DC. It may be because the Nuka-Cola Plant is located there, along with large shipments of Nuka-Cola, which have a bottle cap on each bottle.
The issue of some concern is that with time, number of bottle caps will decrease due to wear. This may be offset to some extent by the fact that many old bottlecaps not already in circulation remain to be found. Also, unopened bottles of Nuka-Cola have one cap on top, which is added to the players inventory.
In Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Bawls caps are worth 50 regular caps each.
