Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Pallis 11-26-05, 01:48 PM	Hmmm....so, the PCs have just broken into ancient Dhakaani ruins and found some of that Empire's gold. My question is this: what value is Dhakaani gold worth in today's Khorvaire? :whatsthis
Just another user 11-26-05, 02:08 PM	If they found 1000gp worth of gold it will be worth .... 1000 gps. In D&D Gold is gold, why it should be worth differently? Of course if is in form of works of art or Dhacaan manufacts it could be worth something more to a museum or a collector, but if they found something really precious then they will have soon the Dhakaani Heirs pursuing them trying to take them back.
Bluebrush 11-26-05, 02:15 PM	Well, there is the possibility you could sell the rare coins to a collector, but if you've unearthed a thousand of them, you could hardly call them rare. At least, not any more. On the other hand, maybe you'll find a -587BCE coin in the horde, which collectors have been looking for, that could go for maybe 1.5gp I'd suggest that you give the PCs a one for one trade, citing trading costs and all that. Either that or have the PCs themselves do the legwork, where they spend the week selling the coins individually. If they do the latter, maybe give them a 10% bonus.
Gurv 11-26-05, 04:02 PM	Quite right. Aside from the interests of collectors, the whole point behind using gold as a trade medium is that gold is gold, no matter where it's from. Although it isn't mention often, most shops and such in these times would have a scale ready at hand for when a purchase was to be made. That way, payment could be made in gold coins, gold nuggets, or whatever form it might take. Larger towns and cities actually had an official whose job it was to make sure that the town's businesses had accurate scales, as scams abounded in which dishonest merchants made a customer's coins seem underweight (or their own merchandise seem heavier).
Madwabbit 11-27-05, 12:15 PM	Short answer: in my campaign, Dhakaani coinage typically fetches about twice it's value, depending upon who the PCs find to buy it. It might fetch more than that, depending upon how OLD it is, but that's the rough rule o'thumb I use, and here's why: If they found 1000gp worth of gold it will be worth .... 1000 gps. In D&D Gold is gold, why it should be worth differently? Au contraire, mon frere! In D&D, gold is worth ... whatever the DM says it is! In other words, your generalization is true *IF* you melt down the gold: 20 lbs of melted-down Dhakaani gold is worth the same as 20 lbs of gold freshly mined from the Ironroot Mountains in 998 YK. But other DM's might see it differently, to wit: An ancient Dhakaani gold piece retrieved from the underdepths of Sharn might ostensibly be worth 1.5 to [whatever power of X the DM decides] to someone who is willing to pay more for Dhakaani GPs. A 17th-century Spanish gold doubloon retrieved off the Florida coast is significantly worth more than a gold chain of similar weight purchased from your local mall's jewellery store. It's not just a matter of weight... it's a matter of history. Or, as they say on Antiques Roadshow, "It's all about provenance, dah-ling!" :)
Edymnion 11-27-05, 01:30 PM	It depends on how much micro-managing you want to do with the economy. Could ancient coins be worth more than current ones? Sure. But that sets the precident that old coins are worth more. What happens the next time they find a bunch of old coins? The kingdom of galifar was nearly a thousand years, are human minted coins from that era worth more? What about the coins found in old tombs? Essentially, do you want to make it a houserule that all old coins are worth more than current ones, and if so, why? Do you want to have to go through all of this every single time the PCs find a big stash of coin?
zambuka 11-27-05, 05:55 PM	Collectability of old coinage is a relatively new idea. Old coins became more valuable because they were generally discarded, melted down, or somehow or another destroyed, meaning that the ones that remained were harder to find and thus more valuable to the collector. If a group of adventurers found their way into an ancient Dhakaani tomb and found a large cache of old empire coinage then they have the potential to seriously devalue the market for coins found in that era. The more coins found the less value they have as a collectable itme. Find a thousand -10,000YK coins? The first time you sell a cache like that you may get the collectable value for it, next time 'round however you are likely to find the value has seriously decreased because of the sudden availability of all those coins on the market. The best way to deal with it is that while the PCs may have found a cache of coins, only 2 or 3 are rare enough to be worth more than their weight in gold.
Pallis 11-28-05, 12:54 PM	ok guys...thanks for the replies and suggestions. I'll give it some thought...
cmanos 11-28-05, 01:59 PM	you could also play off the moneychanger idea and say that coins not "of the country" are worth less than country coin. So if someone came from the Shadow Marches and went to the moneychanger with 1000gp in Shadow Marches gold, in Sharn it would be worth, say, 750gp, while in Aundair, someone may give you 800gp, and someone in the Eldeen Reaches may give you 850gp. It all depends on whether you want to deal with a dynamic economy like that. Personally, it is way too much micromanaging for me. Now if someone came up with a program that took into account all the change of coinage in Eberron, you may be abl;e to come up with an algoritm to compute all that. IMHO 1gp=1gp=1gp
stone_dog 11-28-05, 11:37 PM	You know when you roll up a treasure and there is a portion of it that says "Objects of Art?" Some of that is in particularly rare coinage of collectable value. Everything else is just nifty looking GP.
twelvedrunkenmonkeyz 11-29-05, 02:26 PM	I would say this, if the PC want to spend the time to dump a few coins on a collector, let them. But think about this how POed this collector is going to be when he finds out that they just unloaded 10 Dhakaan gp for whatever standard gp, and then the town is flooded with another 990 Dhakaan gp that were traded at equal value. Also think of it this way, most of those gold coins are going to be worn and messed up in some way or another. So I would say only a fraction of them (maybe 1%) would be in the condition to be traded for more.