"Coin of the realm"

According to Miriam-Webster coin of the realm means
something valued or used as if it were money in a particular sphere
For my grandson Jake the coin of the realm is stickers, any kind of stickers.
Hardly a visit goes by when he doesn't bring along some stickers to show and to share. And he really is good about sharing.

Yesterday he shared with us his sticker box in which he keeps a huge number of his stickers.


And the first thing he wanted to do after showing us the box and its contents was to give us some stickers. Throughout the evening he put stickers on our clothes or other personal effects or simply gave us a partial sheet of stickers to decide what we wanted to do with them. He's like a king with a fortune he wants to share with his subjects.

A couple of days ago I got a sheet of gold star stickers in the mail from someone soliciting for donations. Of course, I thought of Jake and set the stickers aside while I threw away the donation request. The next time Jake came for a visit I gave him the sheet of gold star stickers and you would have thought I had given him real gold stars. A few minutes later with the sheet of gold stars balled up in his hand, Jake confided to me, "These stickers will calm me down. Right, Grandpa?"