Money Trivia
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169 free Money trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This money trivia quiz is about money in the broadest sense: where the word comes from, what people have used as cash through history, the coins and notes that became legends, the slang we use for it, the gold it was backed by, the ways it has been stolen, taxed and given away, and the characters (real and cartoon) famous for hoarding it. The easy questions are ones most people know: what a buck is, what Monopoly is based on, why Fort Knox is famous, and which coin is flipped 'heads or tails'. From there it gets harder: Juno Moneta's temple, tally sticks and the fire that burned Parliament, the Templars' letters of credit, denarii and sestertii, the widow's mite and Charon's obol, the guinea's 21 shillings, the farthing's wren, the 1933 double eagle that sold for $18.9 million, Krugerrands and sovereigns, Operation Bernhard, the Great Train Robbery, Brink's-Mat, the window tax, Danegeld, Pacioli's Rule of 72, the Welcome Stranger nugget, the Klondike stampede, Mansa Musa and the first billionaire. If you want exchange rates and banknote design, our Currency quiz covers that; for markets and banking, try Finance. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the coins, people, events and customs named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question.
30 of 169 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'money' comes from the Latin moneta, linked to the temple of which goddess?
Juno
Rome's mint stood at the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline.
Q 02Which function of money lets purchasing power be saved and spent later?
Store of value
Money acts as a store of value because it can be held and spent later; the other classic functions are medium of exchange, unit of account and standard of deferred payment.
Q 03Accounting records more than 7,000 years old, predating coins, have been found where?
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia: clay tokens and tablets recording debts of grain and livestock go back more than 7,000 years, long before the first coins appeared in Lydia around 600 BC.
Q 04Lacking precious metals, 17th-century Sweden produced 'plate money' made of what?
Large slabs of copper
Sweden struck plate money from large slabs of copper; the 10-daler plate of 1644 weighed nearly 20 kg and measured roughly 30 by 70 cm.
Q 05The 'heads' side of a coin is formally called what?
Obverse
The obverse is the heads side of a coin, usually carrying the principal portrait or design; the reverse is tails.
Q 06The Romans called coin flipping navia aut caput, meaning what?
Ship or head
Navia aut caput means 'ship or head': early Roman bronze asses showed the two-faced god Janus on one side and a ship's prow on the other.
Q 07Which US city's name was decided by an 1845 coin toss, the penny itself kept in a museum?
Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon: Francis Pettygrove, from Portland, Maine, won two of three tosses against Asa Lovejoy, who wanted to name the settlement Boston.
Q 08Which Italian scholar is credited as the first famous coin collector?
Petrarch
Emperor Augustus gave old coins to friends at festivals.
Q 09The word 'numismatics' ultimately comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Current coin or custom
Numismatics derives from Greek nomisma, 'current coin' or 'custom', itself from nomos, 'law'; the word reached English through French numismatique in 1792.
Q 10Which Latin phrase on the edge of some British coins means 'an ornament and a safeguard'?
Decus et Tutamen
Decus et Tutamen, 'an ornament and a safeguard', was first lettered on the edge of Charles II's 1662 crown to deter clipping and later on the 1983 pound coin.
Q 11The phrase 'not worth a plugged nickel' refers to what?
A coin with its metal core removed and filled
A plugged nickel was a coin with its metal core removed and filled with cheaper metal, a form of debasement that left it worth next to nothing.
Q 12The English word 'cash' originally meant what?
Money box
Cash first meant a money box: it entered English around 1590 from French caisse and Italian cassa, from Latin capsa, 'box', before shifting to the money itself.
Q 13'Bankruptcy' derives from an Italian phrase meaning what?
Broken bank
Banca rotta referred to a moneylender's broken bench.
Q 21Which modern words for money descend from 'denarius'?
Dinero and dinheiro
Spanish dinero and Portuguese dinheiro descend from Latin denarius, as do Italian denaro and the Arabic dinar; dollar and thaler come from the Bohemian mining town of Joachimsthal.
Q 22A Roman sestertius was worth how many asses?
Two and a half
Its name means 'two and one half'.
Q 23The Roman aureus was replaced in the early 4th century by which gold coin?
Solidus
Constantine struck the solidus at 72 to the Roman pound.
Q 24In the Bible, King Solomon received how many gold talents per year?
Q 14The word 'salary' comes from Latin salarium, a term connected to which commodity?
Salt
Salary derives from Latin salarium, a Roman soldier's allowance, formed from sal, 'salt'; how far the allowance was actually paid in salt is debated, but the root is not.
Q 15Which is the world's oldest existing retail bank, founded in 1472?
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, founded in 1472 as a charitable lender for Siena's poor, is the oldest bank in continuous operation; Berenberg (1590) is the oldest merchant bank.
Q 16From 1150, which order issued letters of credit to pilgrims, an early form of banking?
Knights Templar
The Knights Templar let pilgrims deposit valuables at a Templar house in Europe and draw funds in the Holy Land against a letter of credit, an early cheque system.
Q 17On a medieval split tally stick, what was the longer part held by the lender called?
Stock
The lender kept the longer piece, called the stock; the shorter foil went to the borrower, and the matching grain and notches proved the debt.
Q 18Split tally sticks were typically made from which wood?
Hazel
Exchequer tallies were typically cut from hazel; notches were made for the sum, then the stick was split lengthwise so both halves carried the same record.
Q 19Wampum beads were originally made from which shellfish?
Quahog clam
Purple wampum beads were cut from the quahog clam's shell and white ones from the channeled whelk; purple beads were valued at about twice the white.
Q 20The Roman denarius takes its name from a Latin word meaning what?
Containing ten
Denarius means 'containing ten' because the coin was first worth ten bronze asses; it was retariffed to sixteen asses around 141 BC.
666
1 Kings 10:14 puts Solomon's yearly gold income at 666 talents, well over 20 tonnes of gold; a Hebrew talent was about 3,000 shekels.
Q 25The two 'mites' of the widow's offering were together worth which smallest Roman coin?
A quadrans
Mark 12:42 says the widow's two lepta together made a quadrans, the smallest Roman bronze coin, worth a quarter of an as or one sixty-fourth of a denarius.
Q 26Judas's thirty pieces of silver were used to buy what, according to Matthew?
A potter's field
Matthew 27:7 says the chief priests used the thirty pieces of silver to buy the potter's field as a burial ground for foreigners, hence its name, the Field of Blood.
Q 27Charon's obol was a coin placed where on a dead person?
In or on the mouth
Charon's obol was placed in or on the mouth of the dead to pay the ferryman Charon for the crossing to Hades; Greek burials with coins in the mouth date from the 5th century BC.
Q 28Which Byzantine emperor abolished the nomisma in 1092 and replaced it with the hyperpyron?
Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I Komnenos reformed the debased coinage in 1092, replacing the nomisma with the hyperpyron, a 20.5-carat gold coin that Western traders called the bezant.
Q 29The Florentine florin was first minted in which year?
1252
Florence first struck the gold florin in 1252; it took its name from the city's lily (fiore) on one face, with John the Baptist on the other.
Q 30The gold ducat originated in which city in 1284?
Venice
Venice first struck the gold ducat in 1284 under Doge Giovanni Dandolo; the name comes from Medieval Latin ducatus, 'relating to a duke', a nod to the Doge.