What’s the dollar to bottlecap conversion rate, you think?
Yesterday, Reddit user thefatch1cken shared pictures of a 11 pounds of bottlecaps:
The owner of these caps claims that they were collected over several years, and after Fallout 4 was announced, this person put them all in a box and shipped them to Bethesda with a letter:
If it’s not already obvious, I’m a pretty big fan of the series. Needless to say, I got pretty excited when I started seeing more and more about Fallout 4. I’ve also noticed you’re now accepting preorders. I only saw prices listed in pre-war dollars, and I wasn’t exactly sure what the exchange rate is these days, so I went ahead and sent everything I’ve been able to save since I played Fallout 3 for the first time. Using my bathroom scale and a number I found on Wikipedia, I’m thinking this is somewhere in the range of 2,240 caps. That ought to cover it, right?
Here are the bottlecaps, ready to be shipped:
“You don’t want to know how much it cost to ship it to Maryland,” the owner wrote.
No word yet on whether or not Bethesda actually accepted the offer, or even if the package has arrived yet. Here’s hoping that the bottlecap hoarding wasn’t for nothing, though!
Contact the author at patricia@kotaku.com.
Comments
9 responses to “Someone Says They Tried Paying For Fallout 4 With Bottlecaps”
Bethesda will have a dilemma when it comes to accepting this. On one hand its good PR and they would get some serious internet coverage for doing it. But on the other hand they open themselves up for copy cats.
If they give it to this guy, and refuse the rest I reckon the PR would be find haha
“What’s the dollar to bottlecap conversion rate, you think?”
The question came up on reddit so I worked it out.
A Legion Aureus (gold coin) is worth 100 caps. Assuming it weighs 8 grams (like classic roman currency) it’s current value is about $300
So each cap is worth about $3 US dollars and you would only need 20 to buy Fallout 4.
Pretty sure the dollar depreciated compared to the cap in the Great War, which hasn’t happened yet. (Unless I’m living in a simulation. It wouldn’t be the first time.)
You can get custom bottle caps made for US$0.14 (https://www.bottlemark.com/info/faq#price) but the ones used here are used, non-custom jobs so that’s effectively a maximum. So, minimum is around 420 caps.
Bethesda could use them to leverage a marketing campaign, but they would be better off getting custom ones done with a Nuka-Cola logo… best bet is probably to accept them as a one-off, as the marketing value of the attendant publicity would vastly exceed the cost of one copy of the game.
He probably shouldn’t have posted this until Bethesda received it. It;s not going to be a surprise anymore 🙁
I hope they don’t do anything. Too many people think that by doing something like this they’ll be rewarded.
Really? Because I don’t see many people with a collection of 2000 bottlecaps trying to buy video games with them. It has nothing to do with reward, it’s technically steel i think, so it could be scrapped for real money.
Even if he doesn’t get the game, it’s still fifteen minutes of internet fame for a cool idea, and free publicity for Bethesda… Everyone wins really.
I think they should do it but make a statement like… “we accepted the offer not only because this guy is a massive fan but his originality. Luckily he also managed to send the right amount of caps, we already worked out the cost of a retail copy being at 2235 caps and he kindly sent in 2240… 6 less and we would of be unable to do the transaction”.
I would like to see how many people send that many caps at the cost it takes to ship…. I bet no one does.