Yap Island Stone Money “Fei” to be offered in Stack’s Bowers and Ponterio’s January 6-9, 2012 NYINC Auction
The stone money of the Yap Island could never be classified as “pocket change.” In fact, the largest examples are over 12 feet in diameter and weigh about two tons. In our 2012 New York International Numismatic Convention auction, January 6, 7, and 9, we are pleased to offer a 54-pound, 18 x 3.5 inch Yap Island “Fei.” These stones are seldom seen on the numismatic market and have been called the “Holy Grail” of primitive money collecting.
Considered sacred among local people, Yap Island stone money was not easy to make or to transport. As there is no large source of stone on Yap, the calcite stones were quarried and shaped on the Island of Malakal, in Palau, using axes made of clam shells, and then shipped on native boats to Yap. The overseas trip could be very dangerous, and often the value of a stone was directly related to the number of human lives lost in its quarrying and delivery. Although ownership of a stone was traded, often the stone itself would not be relocated as the size and weight made actual transfer of the item impractical.
Although there are many sizes and shapes of Yap stones, they can be classified into two basic types pre and post O'Keefe. The earliest stones were produced by locals using axe heads made from shells of giant clams. Later stones or "O'Keefe stones" were produced in the 1800s using metal tools. David O'Keefe was an American of Irish heritage who came to Yap with tools and a junk boat acquired in Hong Kong which he used to quarry and transport "Fei" from Malakal to Yap. Through this process he set himself up as the King of Yap Island. The 1954 motion picture "His Majesty O'Keefe" starring Burt Lancaster (although somewhat dramatized), fairly accurately portrays this series of events.
"The Stone Money of Yap a Numismatic Survey is of the pre O'Keefe type, quarried and shaped by the native Yapese using the traditional axes made from giant clam shells. Seldom are larger stones available for sale, as removing them from the island was extremely hard due to their size and weight. In terms of condition this stone is complete, unbroken and attractive.
There are many theories about the origins of money, about what ‘value’ is and certain preconceptions about what functions it performs.
We have though an example of money so unique and so durable that today will be declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco at its annual convention in Paris.
The Yap islands are a small group of the Caroline Islands in the South Pacific, they have a unique form of giant stone money, Fei or rai.
We tend to think now of money as originating as specie, metal coins, however as AH Quiggin points out a vast range of different things have functioned as money in the past
We may also have been influenced by ideas that States demanding taxation is the origin of money; for some theorists (Chartalists) this is even the definition of money. This is false most traditional societies evolved money, the main exceptions being some scattered hunter gatherer cultures.
Current thinking amongst archaeologists is that money originated as a store of value, or rather a memory symbol of a store of value, especially in cultures where subsistence depended on the labour of a family, and the loss of a family member, or a bad season or weather event, could lead to starvation. Given that food is perishable finding a store of value enabled exchange of that store for another agricultural surplus that year. The ability to exchange surplus for a bride, to compensate for the loss of labour, may also have been key (WILLIAMS, J. (Editor) Money: A History (London, 1997))
Of all the many forms of money used by man it is precious metal which in Asia Minor, perhaps in the 7th century BC, became flattened, rounded, weighed and stamped, that came to dominate economic life for the entire world. This traditional money of Asia Minor, which today are called ‘coins’, originated in a region of caravan routes and safe harbours with little tidal influence and the resulting busy markets. Most importantly there was access to gold. Despite being relatively easy to counterfeit (compared to shells for example), and even easier to debase, precious metal based coins had the advantage of reproducibility, standardisation, convertibility and fungibility (something that is interchangeable, exchangeable or substitutable).
Coins could also be stamped with the mark of a king, a king who could demand payment in taxes. We should not confuse the origin of specie with the origin of money which has much older roots.
The particular form money takes though will very often depend on contact with and trade with other societies. The earliest European accounts of Yap do not tell of the stone money, though there was trade and barter with Europeans. If a group traded part of its surplus then it created risks. You cannot eat into your subsistence. However you could trade with other islanders for that subsistence.
“If somebody was in real dire straits, and something happened to their crop of food or they were running low on provisions and they had some stone money, they might trade,” so says Scott Fitzpatrick, an anthropologist at North Carolina State University who is an expert on Yap.
Whilst Yap had shell money giant stone money developed as store of value. It was quarried from argonite on the Island of BabelThaup, one of the Pialu Isalnds, 400 miles to the South West. In return for the quarrying the island required construction of a stone street.
