The Money Museum in Chicago and Primitive Money

Just a few days after visiting the Money Museum in Cleveland, we traveled to Chicago with my daughter. Amongst many things, we had a chance to visit the money museum, with my friend, Carl Wolf. I couldn’t help but comparing it to the one in Cleveland, after all, both museums are maintained by the Federal Reserve.

This time, I did not request any special assistance, as I thought that between Carl and my daughter, I will have somebody to tell me about what we can see. For that matter, it is hard to find anybody more qualified to describe it than Carl.

First we viewed the history of money, obviously you can only say so much about it throughout a few panels, though I still learned new things. I liked the idea, the points they made, and this is exactly what I would tell a kid about money in the United States, to make it interesting, useful, but not too generic or complicated.

Similarly to the Cleveland museum, there was also a station where kids could test their knowledge on telling the difference between real and counterfeit money, but I think the samples were different. Emily really enjoyed it.

Somehow the theme seems to be the million Dollars, which you can see in all kinds of environments, in a huge cube in Dollar bills, in a globe in 20s, or in a briefcase, where we took a picture. It was fun, we had a conversation about how you can divide money, and later, a bit about what really is a million Dollars.

It was a great museum, definitely worth visiting even if you have seen a similar one. It has great activities, and learning materials for kids. Now I’m set on checking out the rest of the Fed money museums.

I asked Carl to bring a few things with him to show Emily. Carl is the president of the international Primitive Money Society where I have a membership as well. I showed her some things about primitive money, but Carl is the kind of expert that I couldn’t refuse to ask for a favor. He brought a great assortment of interesting objects from all around the world which were used as money, such as a Chinese metal pants shaped object from 300 Bc, a Siamese silver bar, beads, and a bore’s tusk from New Guinea to mention some. So, I was going to surprise Emily with this little exhibit, but as always, I learn a lot from Carl.

After the special exhibit for Emily, we enjoyed a very nice dinner. We had a conversation about my long pending research, where I think I mostly just got stuck, so Carl gave me a number of great ideas I haven’t considered to make some more progress. As I am writing this post a few days after this conversation, the ideas really seemed to work. I’m on the right track again.