According to ace numismatist Eric McFadden, the London dealer of veritable old money -- as in classical ancient coins -- the first ones were made of electrum, a mixture of naturally occurring gold & silver. King Croesus of Lydia (circa 561-546 B.C.) probably issued the first of these.

Throughout antiquity, coins generally would bear the value of their metal content. Only in modern times did “money” come into circulation of no intrinsic value; in some cases worthless as pieces of paper – think Weimar, Argentina, & latter day USA when in the span of less than a decade the benchmark of wealth skipped from a million to billions & then trillions (“now we’re talkin' real money”... until the gazillions pop up).

Ah, the superpower laze of a printing mint so any two-bit with a good Canon or Xerox, plus some decent paper stock, can play like Bush & Barack: print bills & watch ‘em pass as cash... the New American way replacing Vegas on the road to riches forshadowed by economist John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory, his definitive assessment of what happens when trading & speculation become the dominant force in the financial system:

“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes the by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”.

Yea, the shoddy craftsmenship of the kleptocracy at the head of what Nobel laureate Paul Krugman labels a Banana Republic with Nuclear Weapons (at least the military gets its job done).

One of Aesop’s most fabled lines (coincidentally written during Croesus’ era) is how “we hang petty thieves & appoint the great ones to public office.”

Good God, what on earth does this have to do with a simple bar of... for Christ’s sake, it’s only chocolate?

Well, even kids nowadays learn that cacáo beans were used as a kind of currency among the Maya & Mexìcâ of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Centuries later the Swiss Trinity devised Milk Chocolate, combining browned gold & silvery milk, essentially a chocolatelectrum.

This bar crafted with a cacáo called by its makers Vera Cruz Criollo is reportedly grown in traditional Mayan silviculture - setting trees in aguada ponds & subterranean cenoté pools. And, frankly, it looks & smells like it... pitiable & abject really... but the taste is just the opposite & anything but; the flavor just macs it, a cash lotto by endtimes that defies its rating much in the way as other miscarriages of justice (Grenada's li'l bean that could or lovely Esmeraldas from Salgado.