I always thought about that

I'm reminded of that Twilight Zone episode where the guy is struggling out in the desert, dying as he offers an entire gold bar for a sip of water, only for the two who saw him die mention how utterly worthless gold was in their time.

@Ded2thaworld ! which is funny because the quickest way to get rich in New Vegas is do old world blues, than Sierra Madre. Take all the gold from Sierra and teleport to old world player home and bit by bit take the gold to different vendors like the gun runner vendor bot outside of vegas

I'm sure robco would pay for it at the least. The NCR would pay for it too. They have plenty of technicians and engineers that need gold as a conductor. It just wouldn't be as valuable as one today would think. The van Graff's would probably murder you for all your gold if you pulled up into Free Side. Gold would be so handy in their plasma and laser tech.

I just leave it in the trashcan next to the Gunrunner's vendotron.

And its more difficult to counterfeit.

Most wastelanders have no education, so they wouldn't even know that precious metals would have those uses. They'd be much more concerned with more immediate needs, like food, shelter, and heating. Those that do understand the technical value of those things and have the knowledge to use them are far and few between. Examples of groups who would understand their value would be the Enclave, Institute, Brotherhood, and the scientists of Rivet City. The common man, however, would not.

Yes, but that would make it even more valuable to those who know how to use it

@@shroomer3867 Indeed, it would make them far more valuable to those that knew of their worth as a material to work with rather than a currency. They would be far less likely to disclose the usefulness and actual usage to the masses and instead trade these precious metals for useless caps. The ignorant receive the currency they like and the knowledgeable receive the materials they want at almost no cost.

@@ivaylotsvetkov3801 well if its so useless to the ignorant then they wouldn't risk going to places that have it, so either it has some value because the scientists and such have some idea how barter with scavvers/prospectors work.... or it truly is that hard for the ones in the know to get that its the equivalent of buying rare antiques today. Either way, it will cost more then almost nothing vs its actual value (and thats assuming that the scavvers don't organize themselves into a gang or "guild" of sorts and decide to horde scrap and drip feed it to people looking for it at a markup because they can.) Edit: and all this is assuming that they can keep its value to them secret

Can't remember the amount of times I accidentally unloaded a mag of literal money because I panicked

@comradeurod9805 that is why you probably shouldn't be a banker in that universe.

@@algonuevo5232 I'd probably be dead in some maintenance tunnel in that universe

In the book it was interesting because any “cartridges” was considered currency or it may have just been 7.62 im not too sure in all honestly. Regardless artyom in the books constantly had to think about his cartridge store in relation to the conflicts he’d get himself in. Every right was blowing money away for him.

@@mitchellgustafson3662 the currency they use is pre war ammunition, which is of course because they were much more reliable than the ammunition they make in the metro (naturally), and I think it was 5.45 iirc

In Fallout 4 you need quite a lot of gold for the Laser rifles so i can see how it's quite useful.

precisely, gold is one of the best conductors in the world

@@thedipermontshow For laser rifles and robot mods. I imagine places like Greygarden really need gold to maintain their robot population.

The thing is, that would make gold a terrible currency in that case. Your money is being removed from the economy in a rapid and consistent manner, but cannot be replaced at an equal rate. Unless you are using a gold backed paper money but even then the reserve would dwindle over time. It's a great tradeable commodity though.

@@Bothrops_Asper_89 that makes a lot of sense.

Do they have the ability or knowledge to make those things?

Alternatively- gold is not a rare element at all; it's just that "pure gold" is rare, and the rest of the gold in the world is hard to extract with current 2020s technology. If there are factions in Fallout with the ability to extract gold, and have the means to do it without incurring cost due to the dangers (sodium cyanide processing for an example) due to automation/robots, it's very possible that the actual value of gold is far less than we would assume

​@@catman-du8927 that's why the BoS has scribes and engineers. They know how to build, maintain and repair power armor, laser guns and their aircraft.

Meh, I think there's an abundance of gold in the dump fields and trashed electronics for the brotherhood not to bother with that. The amount of gold used in electronics is very small, according to techdim, "To acquire 1 gram of pure gold, we need to recycle at least a thousand sim cards." Or, inversely, to build one thousand sim cards, we need just 1 gram of gold. And then you need to consider just how high the production rate of these factions have -- if they built them by hand with minimum machine aids, they would not be able to consume 1 kg of gold in perhaps months. Thus having scavengers pick up discarded motherboards and CPUs etc. might well be enough to meet the demands. That and no doubt the wasteland tech factions recycle their own electronics, thus further lowering demand for gold in electronics.

Gold is not the best conductor on the planet. Gold is only okay at conducting, but it’s used on small electronics because it does not corrode. A very thin silver wire, the best conducting metal, would be prone to corroding and even a minuscule amount of corrosion could completely ruin wires that are the size of human hairs in complex circuits, so they’re often made of gold instead, which is worse at conducting but does not corrode

It would also just make the protagonist have a settlement to buy things from, where prices are low, and a settlement to sell things at, where prices are high.

@@justanotheranimeprofilepic or do what Skyrim allows already. Break the economy but invest in the shops. If they made that repeatable so you don't kill the economy the game can always continue to create value

Gold is money

@@squaeman_2644 No. Gold is gold. Money is perceived value. If a culture or civilization has no use for gold, they won't use it as money. There is no intrinsic value for anything in terms of $$. For example, imagine you're a small village and you live near a gold deposit. Is gold going to be valuable to you without any trade partners? Probably not. The value of gold in terms of coinage and backing currency came from its rarity and its lack of practical uses. It wasn't until electricity and computing that gold actually was considered usable for anything besides just "rare and shiny".

@@justanotheranimeprofilepic it would, in theory, be easy to prevent that, as the player is the government in these settlements, there logically would be no settlement where caps are more valuable than in another settlement, thus the most logical and immersive balancing measure would be to directly tie a settlement's treasury to the player's wallet, this would also streamline purchasing, no longer do you need to pick up your caps before spending them

I personally like the "Jet Road" theory. There is a very long trade route similar to the real "Silk Road". So Caps were introduced that way. Or the Fallout 76 BOS introduced it. They are still in partial contact with the West.

No “canon” is really needed, because no game in the series, Interplay, Bethesda, Obsidian, etc., presented currency realistically. It’s all just flavor for the setting.

​@@MegaZeta r/Whoosh звідци! Кловун.

Well not pnly that but given the close proximity of new vegas and it's focus on luxury accomodations and gambling associated tourism targeted towards wealthy merchants, business owners, and politicians, it's not a stretch to see the value it would have for decorations, trinkets, and jewelry in that region. I mean just off the top of my head I don't think it had any gold but Im pretty sure benny's handgun had pearl grips. Luxury obviously has not stopped being a human desire for those who can afford it.

According to Victoria Van Graff, the NCR basically has more money than God, and far more wealth than the Legion. And since the NCR doesn't use high-tech equipment or coinage (they have their own dollar), gold would be perceived by them as having limited use. They wouldn't rely on it economically or militarily. The Legion would actually probably value it more since it exclusively uses metal coins.

@@DovahFett I figured they'd probably want a malleable gold stock since, unless I was lead to believe otherwise, their dollar is simply fiat currency like pretty much every other nation on Earth now. I know I'm certainly missing the finer points of economics and global trade to make such a point, BUT if they're operating on the paper/fabric monetary system it makes sense to me at least they might be tangentially interested in something to help back that dollar. Still thanks for that Van Graff line. I tend to miss it since it's fairly rare for me to do an NCR playthrough.

​@bloodieddoomguy1961 I think the ncr dollar is actually backed by potable water no?

@@beesafterdark5644 I thought that was the old Water Merchants. One cap being equivalent to one bottled water and such.

Do we really have to bring up that prick every time gold/currency is mentioned somewhere? Rich guy took a vacation and everyone clapped.

It was always interesting to me that Mansa Musa balled so hard in Alexandria that the city had inflation issues for a good 5 years after he left

@@MajinMoon You could say he was ballin' but what caused the inflation was that he gave away so many gifts. Which I think is indeed ballin.

@bananamandan7842 King was playing 4th dimension chess by wrecking every civilization economy so they can't pay for a amry to invade his kingdom

He also nearly himself in doing so. He gave away all the gold he had taken with him on his trip and had to return home as he had no more for travel expenses.

76 has gold bullion and national reserve notes, but that's still a budding system backed entirely by the reserves in Vault 79.

The history of currency isn't very developed in Fallout 3 and 4 because Bethesda doesn't care about creating coherent worlds. They're good at creating objects and places that look interesting, but don't often enough ask why things function as they do. They took images and ideas such as caps, Super Mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout and transplanted them into the Capital Wasteland without thinking too hard about whether they fit in the new environment.

@@JonathanRossRogers That's being too harsh, if fatally misunderstands the hows and whys for how Fallout 3 was created and is generally oblivious to the game theory I was talking about. Obsidian(Interplay) thinks alot about currency, how the currency would affect the world, and all its impacts. While Bethesda is more doing social commentary and theming. neither is wrong and when both are happily married it creates a very pleasant gaming experience, aka Fallout NV which takes both systems and marries them.

@@ryanrusch3976 Perhaps I should have made it clear that I greatly enjoyed Fallout 3 and it didn't bother me that bottle caps were used as currency while playing. I spent many hours exploring the Capital Wasteland and encountered many interesting characters and side quests. I'm also grateful that Bethesda decided to let Obsidian make New Vegas since that game wouldn't have been possible without all the work that went into Fallout 3. While many parts of Fallout 3's world are well designed, they don't all fit together into a coherent whole. Bottle caps as currency is a good example of this. As mentioned in the video, no rationale is given in the game for why a merchant in Rivet City would assign the same value to a cap as a merchant in Underworld. In contrast, all three West Coast games contain explanations for why particular currencies are used.

@@JonathanRossRogers Look at the Elder Scroll games for why their writing is the way it is. each elder scrolls game has in-universe hundreds of years of separation each game and takes place often on different continents. meanwhile fallout timelines for after bombs are about 200 years and a single continent.

Everything you mentioned makes less sense in the capital wasteland

@@kaizenregimen Nah, he is totally right. In Fallout 2, they even largely replaced bottlecaps by real money already. The only reason why Fallout 3 had caps was for the nostalgia.

They should've just used subway tokens as currency instead.

@@Supernoxus then you both agree. Bethesda is stupid

yeah, you can even see obsidian try and bring back proper currencies in NV like the legionary coins and NCR bills, but bethesda keeps forcing marketable aspects of the game for recognition sake.

It's already a mod in F4 and NV

that sounds boring

​@@picardsolo2471what are their names? more interested in the NV one

Yes make things more complicated betesda of all developers can pull that off

​@@skullthrower8904Bethesda might just have to break down and hire the mod authors.......... Actually, that is a good idea anyway. "Fallout 5. Made by Fans for the Fans."

The only alternative to caps I see in fallout 3 and 4 are generic precious metal coins that hold value on their own, but they aren't as cool and recognisable.

You need to take a Deep Dive into Oxhorn’s channel from 5 years ago.

It's a common misconception that gold and silver are useless. They are amongst the most useful resources on earth. They are in so many things it's easier to list what they aren't in. Gold for instance is one of the best conductors of electricity.

@@Gecko.... problem is the lack of training to even implement gold for electronics or other utilities. The Apocalypse caused generations of people to not read or write. Not to mention the pre conceived notion value doesn't exist as the idea of gold as currency was not established in their generation.

@@munanchoinc Beth games show stagnation while the other games had nations and growth so there are a lot of people with the knowledge just not as prevalent.

@@ihaveacookie4226 You see that on the West Coast where worldbuilding actually makes sense. Compare California in Fallout 2 to Boston in Fallout 4 which is ~40 years apart.

​@@DJWeapon8 California had a functional government. Boston was screwed because the Institute sent synths to mess with any formal attempt at establishing a working government. Its why University Point got destroyed and why they infiltrated Diamond City by replacing the mayor with a synth.

The building that the gold is supposedly stored in at Fort Knox is actually very small. And as for a Fallout game in Kentucky it would probably be centered on Louisville and not Lexington. That said Louisville is basically already a post apocalyptic, especially the west end. I would know I used to live their. One of my roommates had a collection of shell casing he picked up off the side of the road. He had about 150 of them.

Well the thing with Fort Knox is that the gold isn't there anymore. If the lore of 76 is cannon all the gold got moved to a vault in WV. That's if I remember that questline properly.

@@sirstone Correct, all of the gold reserves are in vault 79. Fort Knox is empty and likely nuked

yes~

when making ,a currency you have to keep in mind that what you are backing it with has to not be extremely common, but it cannot also be extremely rare, you have to find a resource that is middle of the road in rarity. Enough to stockpile but not something you can just go into a mine and it is everywhere.

Coal wasn't used because it was being turned into Ultracite. The mining companies turned a whole coal town into an Ultracite field.

My pockets, they go 'jingle, jangle.'

​@@Gyrfalcon312 ...and they sing, Ohh, ain't you glad you're single.

Why buy gold when you plant a surprise in someone's pocket? One of the most fun game mechanics.

and in those 200 years it just spread from there - who's to say some traders from Appalachia didn't make their way to DC, accepting caps as payment, which then became the dominant currency sometime later. Could have even made its way up the coast to Boston in that time too

@@CaptainJZH oh yeah absolutely. A good chunk of the merchants in 3 and 4 are roaming so it fits lore wise. Although with how up and down Bethesda is with lore consistency I'd say it's a coin flip on how purposeful the cap robots in 76 are lmao, doesn't make thinking about it any less fun though

Just fyi, the New Califórnia Repúblic has its own paper currency, the NCR Dollar and its backed by water. The Caesar Legion has Gold coins

@@luska5522 they said "the east coasts adoption of a cap based economy"

@@CaptainJZH my bad

or robots!

@@martinpachu7125 Those too, certainly.

Caps are onlyin here because of bethesda. Nice little story tho

Iconography. 3 should've continued the trend of Fallout 2 and used a different type of currency. Like Metro using prewar 7.62x39mm as their currency. Or at least reused the lore of powerful merchant groups dictating that bottlecaps stand in for water like in Fallout 1. There's precedent and it makes even greater sense what with the main quest being written with a *state-wide water crisis* as its conflict source.

Leave it to Bethesda to mess up the lore of a franchise they know nothing about

@@DJWeapon8 Fallout Tactics actually continued the trend of F2 and used its own currency, aluminium can tabs. That's actually an interesting choice because relatively pure aluminium actually *is* somewhat intrinsically valuable (especially since the pre-war alloy is even more useful than just pure aluminium) since while common it's a horrible pain to refine from ore without massive amounts of electricity, but relatively easy to use when pure. The tab would be more valuable on average than the rest of the can since there's no paint to deal with when scrapping it. It also fits the retro future because easily detached tabs were phased out well before FT came out.

I find that i almost never pay fully in caps for anything. At most i pay a few hundred and the rest is valuable stuff i collected but dont need like chems, booze, weapons and armor

You could use weight to get close enough. Than the vendor would just need to briefly inspect the caps to make sure there is no funny business. Oddly according to Google a bottle cap weighs 2.22grams. This makes the math very easy for any domination.

@@cynic5581 True, you could use weight which brings up another issue. I've seen antique Coke bottles and usually the caps are rusted, intact but rusted. So some 210 years after being manufactured, you'd think most caps would just be chunks of rust, if even that. So, would that affect their weight?

@@justinisenberg1841 Rust has weight, but the difference would be negligible.

One more possibility's just that their synth attendee had a garbage programming and simply went berserk when some integer overflowed in its mechanical brain. The meeting was massacred by a Synth, but Institute didn't intend for it to happen.

​@@caav56yeah its just a very happy accident for them considering either way, a commonwealth govt with them at the head or no uniting force between scattered settlements, both leave them as the biggest bois in the wasteland. I do wish they didnt backpedal on that to make the institute more morally grey or whatever. Let em be the evil faction, let em kill folks for their interests.

nobody uses the pre-war money as a currency (except one pre war robot who works in a bowling alley) It has a value in caps, but that's not the same as being used as money

Pre war money value in 4 is because of its crafting use as cloth

My prewar money is worth 8 caps each

@@doomfan8603 thats with max barter perks for increased selling prices and decreased buying prices, standard is 3 caps, which iirc is the same conversion rate for ncr dollars in fo2

Sierre Madre had tokens with radioactive fuel inside. It wasn't caps.

mmm atoms glow

nah bro the KZfaq mod team is better

the discord mods kicks ass

Yeah, I hear they're all pretty Giga Chad

who are the youtube mods isnt it just rad

Hell, I've even invested a bit into copper at this point. Banks are on the rocks

@@MaxiemumKarnage That’s what I like to hear! I’m in the rather unfortunate circumstance of needing to buy a home right now, on top of everything else. Of course, that has changed my spending as of recently but I did get in pretty well before the recent jump in spot prices! My latest purchase was another case of 5.56. Gotta keep that balance and hey that includes copper! I think copper looks awesome, too.

​​@@DontDoDaylight did you just admit to stacking and hoarding ammo to sell at a higher price? Genuinely scumbag behavior.

@@funnyjoke9225 he didn't say anything about selling ammo lol he's probably just stashing it for future use/emergencies

@@funnyjoke9225 Absolutely I’d do that and if it makes you mad then… haha! I got used to being called a “hoarder” back when people were stabbing each other over toilet paper and I was living life as normal 🤣 good times! My buddy and I were chilling at his homestead with our horrifically shameful “stockpile”… more comfortable than ever! Would do again! Gosh… the value of my ammo went from like 28 cents per round to over a dollar and it’s still pretty high. So glad with myself to have gotten in when the buying was good!

It alloys easily with titanium making it good for old armour, and it's soft enough to be melded into other things.

It's mostly chemical. Gold and silver are relatively soft and easy to mold for metals, with low melting points. Combined with not reacting to water (rust) they’re easy to work with and will last a long time. That's probably why we started making coins and jewelry with them.

@@kingofhearts3185 It’s also because it’s shiny. We are still simple minded like that.

I don't really think that we have forgotten it

what is this "gold" you're speaking of?? people used this before ipad was invented???

I mean in a post apocalypse we wouldn’t need them. There’s no manufacturing, electronics, etc. to be needing it. So outside of jewelry, which has very little meaning in a scavenger based society unless it has sentimental value, what exactly would the gold and silver be good for enough to make them valuable?

This fact makes them less valuable as currency, because now they have a use-value that didn't exist before. Its value becomes less stable because it's being consumed by use.

@@nikik5567 you're missing the point that gold is used to repair items common place in that universe like Lazer and plasma weaponry and infrastructure that alone would make it useable as currency to let's say the van Graff's

@@nikik5567 in a post apocalypse there could be a vibrant electronics and manufacturing sector. Society tends to keep the top 1% alive who also tend to know all the technology which passes on to the next generation. with the collapse of society these people would most likely be the only ones to survive after amassing all the resources of their local nation. They might manufacture these sort of components for security cameras or eventually for entertainment purposes. Unless the apocalypse specifically targetted them somehow and only them.

@@genericscout5408 in a post apocalypse there isn’t any industry of any kind. If society has rebuilt itself enough to have thriving tech and manufacturing industries then ur no longer in a post apocalypse.

sir this is a dry-cleaners

if it wasnt for bottlecaps being established and expected, theyd probably have just used prewar money lol

i'm so fucking tired of this NEW VEGAS GUD EAST FALLOUT BAD MUH GAME GOOD YU GAME BAD debate, why everyone want put they dick on the table and see who has the best one when both are stinky and full of bubbles and mushrooms

"Conducting radioactivity" doesn't mean shit, if it did if you picked up an object that has been in the sun for a while it would give you instant sunburn. Hell chances are most old world gold reserves would be fine because they're underground and therefore immune to radioactive dust from falling on them (that's what nuclear fallout is)

Gold has many different potencies. A 10k ring that weighs the same as a 24k will cost way less because of the percentage of gold.

How about you try thinking instead of immediately jumping straight to "Bethesda are dumb and don't care". Caps are used on the East Coast because they were readily available (Nuka Cola was insanely popular in the East), durable (so they survived the Great War), can't be replicated (no one has the equipment to do so) and don't have any other obvious purpose aside from being used as a currency. Paper money by comparison would be better used as kindling for fire, material for patching clothing, or even toilet paper. I swear, Fallout "fans" like you give Obsidian and the OG developers of the series a really bad rep. I mean, you are aware that there were new branches of the Brotherhood, new sources of FEV, and new breeds of Super Mutants in the older games as well, right? You aren't *that* ignorant of the franchise, are you? Furthermore, the appearance of all those things in Fallout 3 was more than justified by the lore of that game. There's a new Brotherhood branch because Lost Hills wanted to know what remained of the former capital, and what secrets technologies it might hold. There's a new breed of mutants because Vault-Tek was in bed with the US government and West-Tek prior to the war and had their own supply of F.E.V. for experimentation. That fact is not out of place at all since all the company ever did was look for new ways to pervert science for personal gain. Experimenting with cutting edge bioweapons is perfectly instep with that goal. Likewise, it isn't simply a new source of F.E.V. that they used, but a modified strand. That's true for the F.E.V. the Institute experimented with in Fallout 4 as well. They are unique localized variants that create unique localized results. That's why the Super Mutants in those games are not even similar to each other, let alone similar to the Mutants made by The Master in the West. For example, Fallout 4's mutants are smarter, smaller, and less physically deformed than the ones in Fallout 3. That is because they were made by scientists in the controlled environment of a lab, while the ones in Fallout 3 were made by other mutants. Mutants, mind you, who cared nothing for things like controlled environments or genetically pure test subjects. They would literally kidnap anyone they could find and take them back to Vault 87 for exposure, which meant that there was no quality control whatsoever. Also, the mutants in the Commonwealth are much less common than the ones in the Capital Wasteland, as no new mutants were being made by 2287. The Institue had stopped their F.E.V. work and dumped their failed test subjects above ground by the point. Vault 87 on the other hand, never stopped making new mutants, so they were all over the place in Fallout 3. I didn't pull any of this information out of thin air, by the way. It's all in the games. If you had paid attention to what they were trying to tell you instead of reverting to the same old tired "Bethesda man bad" mindset maybe you'd know this stuff.

@@DovahFett you got way too hurt about this comment. I am aware of the paper-thin pretextual justifications that Bethesda put in the lore for continuing using these gimmicks. At a certain point, it requires a suspension of disbelief and it's harder to take the universe seriously. I still like Fallout 3 and 4. Fallout 4 is my favorite Fallout. But why do we need so many different sources of super mutants? Answer: Bethesda thinks it isn't Fallout without super mutants. It's very superficial. The Institute super mutant breed is very poorly explained. The BoS being in Appalachia is extremely contrived. Caps as a currency on the East Coast was not explained until Fallout 76 because Bethesda didn't really care about making it make sense. "It isn't Fallout without caps." Not every region in the US needs the same factions, mutants, and currency. It makes the universe a caricature of itself. Not every game needs caps, super mutants, the BoS, deathclaws, etc. Bethesda starts with the conclusion that "it isn't Fallout without these things" and then works backwards from there. It was okay in Fallout 3 but it's apparent that Bethesda has become formulaic in their approach to a Fallout game's world.

"You can drink gold but only once!"

Also less toxic to work with.

@@diveforknowledge more conductive, too. might help with heat buildup by acting as a rapidly disposable heatsink, same way as brass catridges. honestly, there could be a lot of benefits to gold as a projectile material. not exactly practical unless gold loses its value, but interesting.

@@hvarthtonn6870 with how expensive bullets are getting these days it might not be too far off. Lol

@@diveforknowledge eh. in my country its not too expensive, the laws are just highly restrictive. NZ, for reference. so no magazines holding more than a few rounds, lots of feature restrictions, and a long wait time between sitting your test, getting your license, and getting your storage facilities checked by police (which must be done before you can purchase a firearm)

He says atom not Adam...

@@johnnycovenant2286 blessings to adam

@@johnnycovenant2286 Really? I didn't expect Fallout to have references to atomic science but I think you might be onto something. I'll look into it, but in the meantime, receive my blessing.

@@lorthras8248and John Quincy Adams blessings upon you

@@lorthras8248 for this you are my new favourite person. *basking in your glory*

I never thought of that! The caps are probs made from aluminum which doesn’t easily tarnish from what I understand

Lmao that word will never sound the same way again

people suddenly forget how to do things in the apocalypse lmao pretty sure some egg heads would be able to replicate old bottlecap presses unless lore says otherwise _nope_ people in the wasteland can't make bottlecaps you can't do that *no*

You dont have to press or stamp coins - you can cast them.

@@matguimond92 Honestly, it likely wasnt the case initially... Except of course Those who know wouldnt be able to DO so, accounting for the whole collapse of civilization thing :V

We been minting choins for close to 3000 years, it's fairly easy work if you have a mold and a funance, even a primitive one. If you in society that can work iron into a useful martial then your already more advanced then it required to use gold. Gold is extremely valuable for use in electronics, it can't erode and it is a good eletectic conductor, so if you going be making or reparing stuff like laser guns, computers, or anything more advanced then an internal combustion engine you going need gold. Bottlecap presses do exist, NCR have several in working condition, or had might be better to say, as they trying to replace it with their own paper currency that's on the gold standard or rather water standard in this case. There is a sidequest for NCR in New Vegas where you are asked to destroy a bottle cap press in Sarsaparilla factory, that someone had been using to make "fake" bottlecaps with.

Gold is very soft if pure, to mint gold coins you'd only need a hammer, anvil and a stamp, like in medieval times.

I can't drink it I can't eat it It won't heal me It won't stop my headache, heal my wounds, or cure pneumonia You want water I'll give you 5 gallons for a can of cornbeef I'll all give you 2 cans of baked beans for that can of cornbeef as well I have Tylonol, Cplax,and Neosporin.......they are 5 cans of cornbeef each Only got that shiny rock? Maybe next time stock canned goods,water filters,and trading items instead of stacking shiny rock bars and coins.......have a nice day😏

price wise irl lockpicks are more expensive some examples sparrows are around 3.99 per mutipick are around 10$ per so fallouts lockpicks are far cheaper ( i mean they are bobby pins but still fallout lock picking is not something i should go into)