Clamshell Money

The year 1933 was, by all accounts, the very bottom of the Great Depression. In the late 1920s, banks throughout the United States loaned a substantial portion of their assets to investors eager to gamble on rapidly rising stocks. When the market crashed on Black Tuesday in 1929, these financial institutions were left with billions of dollars in bad loans, setting off an epidemic of bank failures. Following the crash, nearly 10,000 institutions went bankrupt, wiping out around 20 percent of the money deposited in the United States. 

Americans’ faith in the banking system had shattered. Understandably, people began to hoard whatever money they had, further destabilizing the country’s financial system. Bank runs became common throughout the United States. By 1933, things were on the verge of collapse. In early 1933, a run in St. Louis threatened banking stability throughout the Midwest. To save their struggling banks, the state of Michigan declared an eight-day-long bank holiday in February. Other states followed suit, and on March 4, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared March 6 a nationwide bank holiday. This gave Congress an opportunity to pass legislation aimed at saving the financial system. Meanwhile, Americans faced a coin and paper-money shortage. They began to use scrip—an alternative to legal-tender coins and notes—while the banks reorganized.  

An Unusual Currency

The most celebrated scrip issued during the 1933 bank holiday was clamshell money. Merchants in Crescent City and Pismo Beach, California, created this unusual currency by using one half of a clamshell. They marked the shell with a value, the issuer’s name, a date, and an endorsement. Crescent City clamshells displayed their information on the interior of the shell, often using a piece of paper pasted inside. Pismo Beach clamshells show the issuer’s details, date, and value marked in ink or paint on the outside, with endorsements found on the interior.

Today, only four Crescent City clamshells are known: one valued at 5 cents and three at 10 cents. Two are undated, one is dated 3/7/33, and another is dated 3/10/33. About 25 to 30 original Pismo Beach clamshells exist, with 19 held in the Pismo Beach City Hall collection. Denominations range from 25 cents to $20, with most dated 3/6/33.

In 2020 the Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society funded research conducted by numismatist Joshua Smith, who traveled to Crescent City and Pismo Beach to study the scrip. Smith found a local historian who claimed issuers of the Pismo Beach pieces had backdated the scrip to March 6, 1933 due to inconsistencies in dates and serial numbers. Smith’s careful analysis supported the historian’s claim that Pismo Beach merchants backdated their scrip currency.

Newspapers from the week of the 1933 bank holiday support Smith’s conclusion. Starting March 7, 1933, at least 17 articles about clamshell money appeared in newspapers across California and Oregon. All but four focused on Crescent City clamshell money. The earliest articles, based on an Associated Press item datelined March 6 from Crescent City, appeared in newspapers along the West Coast, including those serving the Pismo Beach area. The first mention of Pismo Beach clamshell money, datelined March 8, appeared only in newspapers near Pismo. This suggests that the Pismo Beach pieces may have been inspired by their northern neighbors.