Coins

Coins are the main unit of currency in Terraria. They are primarily used for NPC transactions, but can also be used as ammunition for the Coin Gun. Terraria's currency is made of four different metals making four types of coins: Copper Coins, Silver Coins, Gold Coins, and Platinum Coins.

Coins can be obtained by killing enemies, interacting with NPCs, finding them in multiple forms of loot, or shaking trees. Despite coins appearing as the materials "Copper", "Silver", "Gold", or "Platinum", they are not related to their respective ore types and cannot be crafted from them.

The coin value an enemy drops upon death is calculated from fixed values in the game code, with some random variation. See NPC drops § Coin drops for further information.

Storage
Inside the player's inventory, coins have their own special slots, although it is possible to move them into normal inventory slots.
 * Coins picked up from the environment, or "shift-clicked" from a storage item, will automatically combine into their higher denominations, if possible.
 * For example, if the player picks up 100, they will end up with in their inventory instead.
 * Similarly, a player holding and picking up another 15, will end up with.
 * Using "Quick Stack" on an open Piggy Bank, Money Trough, Safe or (collectively, a "bank"), gives special behavior: If there is already at least one coin (of any value) in the bank, all coins in the player's main inventory and coin slots will be moved to the bank. All coins moved, and all coin stacks in the bank, will be combined into the highest possible denominations and minimum number of stacks.
 * Using "Quick Stack To Nearby Chests" will send coins to nearby banks, combining them into higher denominations where possible.
 * Using "Quick Stack" (or "Quick Stack To Nearby Chests") on a storage item, like a chest, will treat coins like any other item, and will not move coins from the player's coin slots.
 * However, coins do not auto-combine when manually moved into a storage item; if there is no room in the storage item, some will be left in the player's hand or coin slots. Stacks of 100 coins should then be manually crafted into the next denomination. (See also the warning below regarding Deposit All.)
 * In the early game, before receiving a bank, it may be inevitable to store coins in a chest. Deposit All does place coins, but if the chest is already full when pressing Deposit All, higher denominations may be destroyed if a stack for that coin does not exist.
 * Coins may be spent in NPC transactions directly from the player's banks.

Drops upon death

 * Upon a player's death in Classic (Softcore ) difficulty (the default mode), half of all  of the stacks of coins in a player's inventory are dropped, rounded up to the nearest whole coin. For example, if the player possesses  in one stack, it will be dropped. If the player has, 5, , or  will be dropped.
 * Upon player death in or, all coins are dropped, regardless of how the player died.
 * Being killed by a player-wielded weapon will not cause the player to drop any coins in Softcore, even if recently damaged by an enemy.
 * This includes accidentally blowing oneself up with explosives.
 * Forms of accidental death, such as fall damage or Chaos State, will cause coins to drop.
 * Dying from the player's own projectile after having it reflected by an enemy (such as a ) will also result in coins being dropped.
 * In, enemies can pick up coins dropped by enemies or players. If said enemy despawns, their location will be saved on the map, and they will respawn in that area. This effect will only occur above . Enemies holding dropped coins emit a sparkle effect based on the color of the best coin they are holding. On , the location will be marked by a coin icon on the minimap, and hovering the cursor over / tapping the icon will show the exact amount of coins the enemy is carrying.

Tips

 * Coins can be researched in Journey Mode. Although tedious, players can duplicate 100 copper and work their way up the denominations until they reach 9999 platinum.
 * A sure way to achieve this is to research Gold or Platinum bars, then sell them in stacks of 9999.

Trivia

 * Copper, Silver, and Gold Coins are the only items that can have a max stack of 100.
 * often spawn in the Underworld due to the large amount of pots.
 * Due to the transaction properties of portable storage, the maximum amount of money that a player can be considered to be able to spend at one time is exactly 0 (40 stacks in Piggy Bank (or ) + 40 in Safe + 40 in  + 54 in inventory, with each stack containing ). This ID outdated due to stack size now being 9999 in the 1.4.4 update. However, if you include the player's ability to pick up coins off of the ground this number could theoretically be infinite. This would have to be accomplished with a money making contraption that allows the player to automatically pick up coins such as an extremely efficient mob farm so that as the player is buying items they gain more money than they are spending.
 * Depending on the version, coins may or may not have a sell value.
 * Coins do not have a sell value.
 * Coins have a selling price equal to the amount in their stack, but cannot be sold. Interestingly, this means that they have an internal buy value equal to 5x what they are worth (meaning buying 1 gold would cost 5 gold)
 * Coins can be sold on the Wii U and  Xbox editions. Doing so will do nothing, however.
 * Depending on their value, some coins will appear larger than others. The Platinum Coin is the tallest and widest coin (14×16 Pixels), Gold Coins are 2 pixels less wide (12×16), Silver Coins dimensions are 2 pixels shorter than the Gold Coin (12×14) and Copper Coins dimensions are 2 pixels shorter than the Silver Coin (12×12), making the Copper Coin the smallest.
 * A Platinum Coin is worth 1,000,000 Copper Coins.
 * Knowing how much space there is in a world, we can see how much space this many coins would take. Placing all of these Copper Coins would take up 4.9% of the area in a Large world, 8.6% of a Medium world, 19.8% of a Small /  Expanded world, and 63.4% of a  Normal world.
 * Purchasing every NPC item requires the following number of coins: (although may increase or decrease these numbers)
 * Unknown
 * Although coins are considered as ammunition due to being fired by the Coin Gun, they cannot legitimately be placed in the ammunition slot, only in the coins slot.
 * Unknown
 * Although coins are considered as ammunition due to being fired by the Coin Gun, they cannot legitimately be placed in the ammunition slot, only in the coins slot.
 * Although coins are considered as ammunition due to being fired by the Coin Gun, they cannot legitimately be placed in the ammunition slot, only in the coins slot.