Bottle cap

Bottle caps are the standard currency in Fallout, Fallout 3, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and Fallout: New Vegas.

In Fallout 2 regular money has been introduced and bottle caps have been rendered useless and can only be found in Broken Hills. They are also called Hubbucks, because they originated from the Hub.

Bottle caps make a return as the standard currency of the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3. In addition to bottle caps, a form of pre-War currency (most likely American dollars) can also be found in the ruins of DC which can then be sold to merchants in return for bottle caps. Bottle caps can also be put to use in weapon form as one of the major components of a bottlecap mine.

In Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, there is a special kind of bottle cap called the Bawls bottle cap, which comes from Bawls. They can be sold for 50 regular caps each.

In Fallout: New Vegas, bottle caps are just one of the many currencies used by different factions, and now the bottle caps are not exclusively from Nuka-Cola; drinking a bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla will give you a spendable bottle cap.

History
Bottle caps are backed by The Hub merchants in the Core Region. The reasoning for their support is that the technology to manufacture bottle caps and paint the surface has been lost in the Great War, which would greatly limit any counterfeiting efforts. Secondly, there is a limited number of bottle caps, which would serve to preserve their value to some degree. There is no explanation whatsoever given for the use of bottle caps in DC.

The issue of some concern is that with time, the number of bottle caps will decrease due to wear. This may be offset to some extent by the fact that many old bottle caps not already in circulation remain to be found. Also, unopened bottles of Nuka-Cola have one cap on top, which is added to the players inventory. Though after drinking a bottle of Nuka-Cola, an empty Nuka-Cola bottle is not added to the player's inventory nor dropped on the floor as litter.

According to Alice McLafferty in Fallout: New Vegas, bottle caps that are worn out or otherwise lost in the New Vegas area are replaced by "minting" new caps with bottle cap presses found in old factories. The Courier can accept a quest to sabotage one such machine that is being used to produce "counterfeit" bottle caps without authorization from the Crimson Caravan.

Behind the scenes

 * All standard bottle caps feature 21 crimps and ridges.

Kapsle Крышки от бутылок