Most people can agree that money is at its best when it consists of pieces of paper and little bits of metal, with numbers and faces on them. But throughout history, and in many different places, money has been very, very weird. Some money is made out of weird things, some has weird pictures on it, and some can only be used in weird places.

When you’re stuck behind an old lady at the post office, and she’s counting out $20 worth of pennies to pay for first-class shipping, just be grateful you don’t live in the Yap Islands, where you’d be waiting for her to put a bunch of 8,000-pound stones up on the counter.

They say money isn’t everything, but these pictures show us that pretty much everything can be money.