Every dollar you spend represents a dollar’s worth of your time and effort at work. It is similar for a rai—but the rai also stores the value of the effort that was needed to make it and move it to Yap. That’s how a rai obtains its base value. Bigger generally means higher value because more labour is necessary, and transporting it is a greater risk. And artisanship matters, too. Stones with stepped faces or smooth surfaces were also worth more—again, because greater effort was invested. The quality (colour, smoothness, beauty) of stone also contributes to its value. But these are all visible, accountable aspects. A rai’s greater value is quite invisible.
A rai’s hidden value
An item is said to have cultural value when it can be directly associated with the history, people, beliefs or rituals important to a society. It’s the same with a rai—its value can be greater depending on who authorized it, who carved it and who subsequently owned it. Did anybody get injured or die when carving or transporting it? What significant cultural activities was it used in? Depending on its specific history, a rai can get more valuable with time.
But bigger is not always better
Although he wasn’t the first European to attempt to profit from Yap’s stony economy, adventurer David O’Keefe was the most successful. Shipwrecked on Yap in the 19th century, he learned about the stone money and came up with a way to profit from it. O’Keefe helped the Yapese quarry and transport stones from Palau with a steamboat, modern tools and possibly a little dynamite. They created bigger rai of higher value—a Westerner’s idea of value. In doing so, O’Keefe provided the Yapese with a service that allowed them to, quite literally, make more money. They paid O’Keefe with coconut meat and sea cucumbers, commodities common on Yap that O’Keefe resold at a huge profit in China.
Interestingly, despite the superior size and finer quality of the O’Keefe rai, they were actually worth less on Yap than many smaller and cruder stones—effectively creating inflation. O’Keefe stones weren’t authorized by any chief, were far less labour-intensive to make and gained no history before being traded. In short, they lacked cultural value. The sheer volume of stones brought by O’Keefe to Yap also depreciated their value. In essence, all that the stones really did was look impressive and cause inflation.
