Yesterday I decided to delve into the magical world of coins for board games. Most games that use coins have them as cardboard cutouts because lets face it – that’s a lot cheaper to produce. And that’s totally fine, much in the same way drinking your favorite booze straight from the bottle is totally fine. It’s economical. But it doesn’t feel special.
I assure you I am not alone in the need for something a bit more tangible to represent my hard earned cash, the need for a bit of heft in your hands while collecting your payday. Even if the idea of metal in your hands is not appealing there’s always chips, so lets start there.
Chips
Your basic entry to this genre would be to use poker chips, which come in all kinds of varieties. They can either be denominated or plain and that is a preference you’ll have to make, based on whether you (and your friends) are ok remembering values attributed to different colours, in which case you have a lot of flexibility in deciding your own denominations, but otherwise you’re better off getting chips with numbers printed on them. You can of course find stickers that you can print your own designs on for the chips, but that just adds additional overhead.
Perhaps the most important factor when buying chips is the material they’re made out of. It’s a common misconception that heavier is always better – the poker chips you’ll find in the majority of casinos tend to be in the 8.5g – 10g band, but you can find chips weighing up to 14 grams. Of course the cheap chips are going to be made out of cheap plastic and weigh very little while the more expensive chips are made out of better plastics or clay composites. You can read up about the different types at home poker games [link].
Pros: Chips can stack well making it easy to count your coffers at a quick glance. (nb some chips are very slippery and therefore hard to stack, heavier chips tend to have better friction.) They also feel a lot better and are more resilient than most base plastic or cardboard currency.
Cons: They’re all the same size so you lose that tactile differentiation of your token’s value. The theme is very limited – it all tends to be unsurprisingly poker focused in decoration.
| 50 Piece tokens, numbered, clay composite (£16.39) | https://amzn.to/3128GN9 |
| 500 Piece poker set, numbered, 14g Clay with metal centre (£70) | https://amzn.to/310xk0p |
Perhaps the best looking chip sets you can get for board gaming is a set called the Iron Clays. However this was a kick-starter project that reached completion and is very hard to get a hold of now.
| boardgamegeek – only place I’ve seen people selling them | boardgamegeek |
| backerkit preorders – not sure how often these are fulfilled. | backerkit |
Coins
Sets for Specific Board Games
With coins we have a lot of options. First off there’s specific coin sets made for particular board games. These tend to be themed based on the game, but if you’re not fussy then they will make a good substitute for any game currency. One of the easiest to get a hold of is the coin set for the board game Scythe by Stonemaier Games. This set has a different style for each denomination of coin and a five different denominations, making it an ideal set as a generic currency replacement. Other notable mentions are Viticulture, Clans of Caledonia, and Brass.
| Scythe | 80 Coins, £24.66 | https://amzn.to/32cBmCq |
| Viticulture | 72 Coins, £24.07 | https://amzn.to/3l45tol |
| Clans of Caledonia | £27.40 | https://amzn.to/34olFL6 |
| Brass / Lisboa | 110 Coins, $34.99 + shipping | eaglegames.net |
Scythe Coins
I bought the Scythe coin set as it seemed to offer a good balance between denominations available, quality and general aesthetic. Overall I am happy with this set. The mold quality is consistent across all the coins and they are easy enough to stack. Some people complain that the 5 is too similar to the 10 in size and colour, which I feel is something that could have easily been avoided at the design phase.
Above you can see how the sizes compare to a particularly reflective £1 and 10p coin. Some of the coins could have done with being made of a denser metal, the 10 for example feels about as light as a coin made out of plastic.
The set comes with 80 coins as follows;
| Coin | # | Weight |
| 1 | 25 | 2.4g |
| 3 | 15 | 3.15g |
| 5 | 15 | 3.6g |
| 10 | 10 | 3.8g |
| 20 | 10 | 5.75g |
These are approximate averages, as I found there to actually be quite a large amount of variance in the weight between coins of up to ±0.2 grams. For reference the lightest UK coin is 5p at 3.25g, the 10p coin weighs 6.5g and the £1 coin weighs in at 9.5g. I think it’s the fact that the number 10 coin weights just over half a 10 pence coin while being a similar diameter makes it particularly jarring to hold.
If you’re looking to add more denominations to your Scythe coin collection there are also promotion packs available for sale separately that have 2s or 50s. They also sell packs of painted 5s and 10s for those that dislike the similarity of the provided coins. I picked up a pack of the 50s for myself which comes with 7 coins. They’re large and purple but their size means they do have a satisfying weight of about 10.2g
These large coins are obviously coated in a form of paint which does seem to chip or scratch away rather easily when you lump the coins together, so time will tell how good they look after excessive use.
For purchasing options it’s good to have a shop around, especially for the promo coin packs as they are quite pricey on Amazon. (Prices as of 23/08/2020)
| Amazon – Scythe Coin Pack (£24.66) | https://amzn.to/3aMALeH |
| BG Extras – Scythe Coin Pack (£21) | http://bgextras.co.uk |
| Magic Madhouse – Scythe Coin Pack (£24) | http://magicmadhouse.co.uk |
| BG Extras – 50 Promo Pack (£5) | http://bgextras.co.uk |
Multi-purpose Sets
There are quite a few coins sets that aren’t inspired by any game in particular, or are themed towards fantasy settings for other role-playing activities. The most obvious of which is pirate gold themed coins. The trouble is, a lot of these sets don’t have denominations, so unless you’re after a single style token your choices are a little more limited.
I purchased a set of fantasy stylised coins from TheNobleArtist on Etsy [link]. £17 for 35 coins at the time of purchase. I really like the design of these coins, however as with my other coin set I do wish the coins were a little heavier. (The fact that they are described as weighty on Etsy makes me call into question what would be considered light!)
| Coin | Weight |
| 1 | 3.8g |
| 3 | 3.85g |
| 5 | 5.5g |
The other annoyance I have found with these coins is that some of the ink used to give the coins depth / age will transfer if you rub it with a sweaty hand, although I was kind of polishing it between my fingers, so perhaps in ‘normal’ usage you wouldn’t experience this.
The other coin collections I found on Etsy were either being shipped from the USA at ridiculous rates or have already sold out. I can’t go far without mentioning TheBrokenToken but once again they are based in the USA. They do however produce some of the best looking coins out there for different themes that don’t necessarily use denominations.
Using ‘Real’ Money
Of course the cheapest way to get metal coins would be to use actual money and some imagination. You can easily get a stack of pennies and other small coins to represent the monetary values in game, but then where’s the fun in that? Also, here in the UK you might not have noticed but the coinage has the values spelled out rather than a nice clear number nowadays.
The solution to this? Use a foreign currency! You can find listings for buying foreign coins in bulk, or perhaps you can plan a holiday to a country with interesting coinage and try to pick some up there. For example USSR coins on Etsy [link]. Or even you can use old British coins no longer in circulation from englishcoincompany.com.
If you’re after more information on different sets of coins you can buy, I came across a blog of someone who has invested a lot of time and money into their coin collection as they like to assign different coins to particular board games. You can find Luke’s blog at pixelartmeeple.com.
