Piggy bank

Piggy bank (sometimes penny bank or money box) is the traditional name of a coin container normally used by children. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century. These items are also often used by companies for promotional purposes, and many financial service companies use piggy banks as logos for their savings products.

Piggy banks are usually made of

The oldest Western find of a money box dates from the 2nd century BC

The earliest known pig-shaped money containers date to the 12th century on the island of Java. The Javanese term cèlèngan (ꦕꦺꦭꦺꦁꦔꦤ꧀; literally "likeness of a wild boar",^{[n 1]} but used to mean both "savings" and "piggy bank") is also in the modern Indonesian language.

A large number of boar-shaped piggy banks were discovered at the large archaeological site surrounding Trowulan, a village in the Indonesian province of East Java and a possible site of the capital of the Majapahit Empire.^[5]

There are some

Uses

The general use of piggy banks is to store loose change in a quaint, decorative manner. Modern piggy banks are not limited to the likeness of pigs and may come in a range of shapes, sizes, and colors. They are most commonly used by temples and churches because they are locked money boxes with narrow openings to drop cash or coins. The box is opened via a plug underneath it at regular intervals when the collected money is counted and recorded.

See also

• Maneki-neko
• Tudor money box

Image gallery

• 
  Roman vase-shaped money box (2nd/3rd century AD). Ancient money boxes appear in the archaeological record in a wide variety of shapes.^[4]
• 
  Money box from the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279).
• 
  Broken money box in red earthenware (between 1250 and 1350), archaeological find from Bruges.
• 
  Tudor money box from the 16th century, England.

Notes

References