[Fallout] So about that economy, am I right gamers? I wanted to get a sort of gauge on the direction of the economy in the Fallout games, so I here's what I came up with.
As far as I could find, it's actually a common misconception that originally a Bottle Cap was equal to one bottle of water. In fact, I couldn't find a single instance of anyone in Fallout 1 actually stating that the currency is backed by water. That's an, albeit extremely sensible, assumption that's been propagated as fact. The reasoning we get for the choice of the Bottle Cap only comes up in New Vegas from Alice McLafferty's dialogue. The implication there is that Bottle Caps act as a convenient currency because of their difficulty to counterfeit. When asked about genuine Caps, Alice says, "Lots of little things - the paint on the label, the machining, the type of metal it's made from. I know there's counterfeit caps floating around, of course. Fortunately, they're very time-consuming to make, so the numbers are small." We can gather, largely through conjecture, that the Bottle Cap was selected because of their prevalence, difficulty in manufacture, and relative size and weight. Of course, by Fallout 2 (2241), Bottle Caps have been entirely phased out in favor of the newly minted and gold backed NCR Dollar.
Now about that NCR Dollar. In Fallout 1 (2161) a 10mm Submachine gun has a base value of 1,000 Bottle Caps and in Fallout 2 a 10mm Submachine gun has a base value of 1,000 $NCR. In the same vein, a box of 12 Gage Shotgun Shells will run you 225 Bottle Caps in Fallout 1, and the same box will run you 225 $NCR in Fallout 2. We can then infer that within the eighty year gap between Fallout and Fallout 2, the value $NCR has become equivocal to the Bottle Cap.
By the time of New Vegas in 2281, a forty year time jump, the NCR's economy has largely tanked as a consequence of the Brotherhood war. Going back to our initial examples: a 10mm Submachine gun has jumped in value to 2,370 Bottle Caps. In $NCR that equates to $5,925 (using the metric of $100=40 Caps). That's a nearly 600% (592.5%) increase! In only forty years! Checking the shotgun shells however is a different story strangely enough. 20 Shotgun shells in 2281 only costs 40 Bottle Caps or $100. That's a 17.7% decrease in value. That said, I think the supply of ammunition is more than likely going to increase at a rate higher than functional firearms, so that's not entirely far fetched.
Another instance of item values going down are Gecko hides. In 2241 a Silver Gecko pelt had a value of 25 bucks with a Golden Gecko pelt going for $125. Forty years later... Silver Gecko hides are still $25 (10 Bottle Caps) but Golden Gecko hides have dropped to only $50 (20 Bottle Caps). Weird stuff here. I think this more stems from the easier access to other, better hides for the use of crafting leather - brahmin are being ranched on an industrial scale now after all.
While we're here, let's look at the Madre's gold bars. In Bottle Caps, a single 10oz gold bar has a value of 10,547. Converting that to $NCR, a single 10oz bar of pure gold goes for $26,367.50. As far as I could tell the $NCR doesn't use cents for some reason, so let's say that rounds down to $26,367. That means as of 2281, an ounce of pure gold is equal to $2,636 (rounded down). For comparison, 1oz of pure gold would be equal to 1,054 (rounded down) Bottle Caps. If that sounds bad, well then it may be unfortunate to know that as of today, July 13th 2026, 1oz of gold is equal to $4016.43. This may look bad, but in simpler terms this means that $1 NCR is equal to $1.52 US. Not as staggering, but it's tremendously funny that the NCR's economy is doing better than my own country's.
I forgot what the point of this one was. Where am I? What's going on? Who are you people? Bottle Cap good Dollar bad.
