Actual coin values [Archive] - Wizards Community

Actual coin values [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
magnoliafan_999
11-17-04, 04:18 AM It has bothered me for a while how generic the conversion between coinages is. I mean come on, ten units of silver worth one of gold? So here is something that I cooked up for the financially **** DM.

p.s. the chart near the bottom looks better as a word file.

Real life metal coins and their Dungeons and Dragons counterparts.

Price of minerals as of 11-16-2004:

Platinum= 868.90$ per ounce
Gold= 440.50 $ per ounce
Electrum*= 216.46$ per ounce
Silver= 7.59 $ per ounce
Copper 1.37 $ per ounce

*(assuming 35% Silver, most coins were 20-55% Silver.)

1 Dungeons and Dragons coin is 1/3 of an ounce (pg. 112 of the PHB.)
There is 16 ounces in a pound.
Therefore that, 50GP, one pound bag would actually have 48 coins in it. (Must be an expensive sack!)

So the per coin cost in modern times would be:

Platinum= 289.63$
Gold= 146.83$
Electrum= 72.15$
Silver= 2.53$
Copper= .46$

Giving us the following conversion rates. The first number is rounded to the nearest coin, the second is to the nearest ten, and the third is the actual to the nearest 10th or hundredth of a percent.

PP, GP, EP, SP, CP,
PP= 1, 2 (1.97), 4 (4.01), 114 or 110 (114.48), 630 (629.63)

GP= .50 (.51), 1, 2 (2.04), 58 or 60 (58.04), 319 or 320 (319.20)

EP= .25 (.25), .50 (.49), 1, 29 or 30 (28.52), 157 or 160 (156.85)

SP= .01 (.0087), .02 (.017) , .04 (.035) , 1, 5.5 or 6 (5.5)

CP= 1/150 (.0015), 1/75 (003), 1/40 (.006), .2 or 1/5 (.18), 1

Or the easy but more accurate than Dungeons and Dragons version:

PP= 2GP
GP= 1GP
EP= .5GP (2EP per GP)
SP= .02GP (50SP per GP)
CP= 1/75 of a GP (75CP per GP)
Kheldren
11-17-04, 04:30 AM If you want to be historical - forget platinum - it was far too difficult to produce to be a valuable metal in the middle ages.

OK on to the coins - (nice work by the way). If you are trying to intoduce realism, the first thing is to drop the assumption that they are all the same weight, and that they are all pure.

Then, of course, you have the fact that they did mint multiple coins of a given metal, e.g. (in England) copper 1d, 2d, 3d, .5d, .25d etc also, once the currency became more establihed than barter (especially with the copper coins) one coin was not metal to the value - that was pretty much just the silver and gold.

So make the coins realistic and give your players a real headache on conversions. :)

Note. decimalization of the currency was resisted here in England as it was too complex!
Mediator
11-17-04, 04:44 AM I fail to see the accuracy of your proposal unless your campaign plays on earth in the year 2004 AND the worth of your currency is only based on the raw material price of the coins.
Sucineri
11-17-04, 05:09 AM fail to see the accuracy of your proposal unless your campaign plays on earth in the year 2004 AND the worth of your currency is only based on the raw material price of the coins.

That's exactly what I was thinking. The values of these coins going up and down all the time drastically..I mean come on, you used to be able to buy a hamburger for a nickelin like the 50's or something, now it costs a dollar (for a generic crappy burger).
magnoliafan_999
11-17-04, 06:15 AM Right, but I'm not really talking about what they are worth in US Dollars, but their relative value to each other. Also, the fact that the DnD economy is based on the gold coin standard.

Dude, a gold coin for a nights stay at a good inn?!? Are you kidding me? 2 GP for a spade or shovel?!? A gold coin would be worth even more goods and services than it is today, because we can find and mine gold even better than we used to. Don't get me started on commodities cartels.

By the time they had an as extensive and complex monetary system as DnD proposes, many people weren't bartering as much any more. If it cost you a month and change of work just to buy a fishing net that may not last long, how could you keep up repairs on your boat, pay the rent, feed your 14.8 kids, etc.? The point is that your average jag-off peasant wouldn't be able to afford living in the DnD world, even considering that they would make a lot of their own goods. Just my view.

A good solution might be to move all the mundane goods and services down one coin value and anything that just costs copper be cut in half or considered incidental.
Watchman
11-17-04, 06:31 AM Most D&D worlds would appear to have fairly abundant reserves of gold, and even more of silver (which gets to act as "small change"). Or maybe more gold and silver coins just appear in monsters' hoards just as mystically as those monsters appear in dungeons... :rolleyes:

In any case the end result would seem to be that D&D precious metal coins have far less intrinsic value than they historically did - a king's ransom can't be carried around in one sack.

Of course, the historical value of coinage varied enormously nevermind in relation to each other; the things varied very considerably in mass and purity (not in the least as rulers had a habit of balancing the accounts by throwing in various additives, which duly devalued the new coins somewhat) and hence buying power, moneylenders and the like tended to literally cut corners with them as their service fee... you get the idea. Not to mention that decimal exchange rates were quite rare - for if the old computer RPG Darklands is to be believed, Medieval German coinage went roughly on a 8-12-1 hierarchy (8 pfennings is 1 groschen, 12 groschen is 1 gold florin)...

Premodern economies were very much bargain economies, and while many rulers tried to impose at least guideline exchange rates for various coins of their own the sheer number and variety of coins of different origins and quality meant haggling and the general opinion on a given coin's value was quite important in transactions.

Simplifying matters in this field is something FRPG developers can be excused for doing in the interests of simplicity.
Sucineri
11-17-04, 09:38 AM I also believe that the D&D world's economy is based off of the silver piece, not the gold piece.

Plus they got magic items which would be worth WAY more than anything that we ever had on earth, and they have TONS of these magic items.

In the D&D worlds, they know how to mine better and MORE than we ever were able to, so they are way oversaturated with wealth as it is. So that totally makes sense why gold and platinum aren't worth nearly as much as it is in our real world.
tarkin
11-17-04, 11:14 AM More importantly than that, gold and silver are NOT a "set value".

Their value fluctuates tremoundously, both within a country and between countries. Worse, the more you have, the less it buys.

In the real world, near an area where people are mining gold, frankly, the value of gold is significantly less.

High wealth generation drives local inflation up. (Which is why Pizza in NYC costs more than Pizza in Poedunk Nebraska).

Adventurers are basically walking gold mines. When they kill a creature and take it's treasure back to town, they flood the town with new cash, creating local inflation.

The prices in the DMG assume that you are an adventurer and that therefore whereever you go is undergoing some temporary inflation.
magnoliafan_999
11-17-04, 02:14 PM All very good points. It's just the idea that bothers me. Simply too many precious coins. Maybe I'll make a game with a sea-shell/fallen leaf economy!
Thelon Fairblade
11-17-04, 02:44 PM In my just-ended campaign, I actually implemented variant coinage across three human kingdoms, and for each major race. Some races used platinum, some didn't (dwarves had "plates" and "half-plates" of platinum/gold mix). Gold coins from different areas varied in worth - one kingdom's coins were larger and weighed more, but were impure and actually valued less; another's had intrinsic artistic and collector value beyond its mere metal value.

It was fun and interesting at first, then quickly fell by the wayside at the game progressed. The only nonstandard coin that remained in use throughout the campaign were "crowns", worth 20 gp.

Next game, though, I'm thinking to make a couple scale changes. Like 10 CP to an SP, 10 SP to a silver scale (the new "electrum"), 10 silver scales to a gold eagle, and 10 gold eagles to a gold crown. Then 50 gold crowns to a platinum dragon.

Ah, but in reality, that's just inconvenient. Easy enough to say a +1 sword costs 2315 "silver scales" or "GP" or whatever... the rules, treasures, and prices all still a based on that coin that occupies the "GP" position.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
magnoliafan_999 11-17-04, 04:18 AM	It has bothered me for a while how generic the conversion between coinages is. I mean come on, ten units of silver worth one of gold? So here is something that I cooked up for the financially **** DM. p.s. the chart near the bottom looks better as a word file. Real life metal coins and their Dungeons and Dragons counterparts. Price of minerals as of 11-16-2004: Platinum= 868.90$ per ounce Gold= 440.50 $ per ounce Electrum= 216.46$ per ounce Silver= 7.59 $ per ounce Copper 1.37 $ per ounce (assuming 35% Silver, most coins were 20-55% Silver.) 1 Dungeons and Dragons coin is 1/3 of an ounce (pg. 112 of the PHB.) There is 16 ounces in a pound. Therefore that, 50GP, one pound bag would actually have 48 coins in it. (Must be an expensive sack!) So the per coin cost in modern times would be: Platinum= 289.63$ Gold= 146.83$ Electrum= 72.15$ Silver= 2.53$ Copper= .46$ Giving us the following conversion rates. The first number is rounded to the nearest coin, the second is to the nearest ten, and the third is the actual to the nearest 10th or hundredth of a percent. PP, GP, EP, SP, CP, PP= 1, 2 (1.97), 4 (4.01), 114 or 110 (114.48), 630 (629.63) GP= .50 (.51), 1, 2 (2.04), 58 or 60 (58.04), 319 or 320 (319.20) EP= .25 (.25), .50 (.49), 1, 29 or 30 (28.52), 157 or 160 (156.85) SP= .01 (.0087), .02 (.017) , .04 (.035) , 1, 5.5 or 6 (5.5) CP= 1/150 (.0015), 1/75 (003), 1/40 (.006), .2 or 1/5 (.18), 1 Or the easy but more accurate than Dungeons and Dragons version: PP= 2GP GP= 1GP EP= .5GP (2EP per GP) SP= .02GP (50SP per GP) CP= 1/75 of a GP (75CP per GP)
Kheldren 11-17-04, 04:30 AM	If you want to be historical - forget platinum - it was far too difficult to produce to be a valuable metal in the middle ages. OK on to the coins - (nice work by the way). If you are trying to intoduce realism, the first thing is to drop the assumption that they are all the same weight, and that they are all pure. Then, of course, you have the fact that they did mint multiple coins of a given metal, e.g. (in England) copper 1d, 2d, 3d, .5d, .25d etc also, once the currency became more establihed than barter (especially with the copper coins) one coin was not metal to the value - that was pretty much just the silver and gold. So make the coins realistic and give your players a real headache on conversions. :) Note. decimalization of the currency was resisted here in England as it was too complex!
Mediator 11-17-04, 04:44 AM	I fail to see the accuracy of your proposal unless your campaign plays on earth in the year 2004 AND the worth of your currency is only based on the raw material price of the coins.
Sucineri 11-17-04, 05:09 AM	fail to see the accuracy of your proposal unless your campaign plays on earth in the year 2004 AND the worth of your currency is only based on the raw material price of the coins. That's exactly what I was thinking. The values of these coins going up and down all the time drastically..I mean come on, you used to be able to buy a hamburger for a nickelin like the 50's or something, now it costs a dollar (for a generic crappy burger).
magnoliafan_999 11-17-04, 06:15 AM	Right, but I'm not really talking about what they are worth in US Dollars, but their relative value to each other. Also, the fact that the DnD economy is based on the gold coin standard. Dude, a gold coin for a nights stay at a good inn?!? Are you kidding me? 2 GP for a spade or shovel?!? A gold coin would be worth even more goods and services than it is today, because we can find and mine gold even better than we used to. Don't get me started on commodities cartels. By the time they had an as extensive and complex monetary system as DnD proposes, many people weren't bartering as much any more. If it cost you a month and change of work just to buy a fishing net that may not last long, how could you keep up repairs on your boat, pay the rent, feed your 14.8 kids, etc.? The point is that your average jag-off peasant wouldn't be able to afford living in the DnD world, even considering that they would make a lot of their own goods. Just my view. A good solution might be to move all the mundane goods and services down one coin value and anything that just costs copper be cut in half or considered incidental.
Watchman 11-17-04, 06:31 AM	Most D&D worlds would appear to have fairly abundant reserves of gold, and even more of silver (which gets to act as "small change"). Or maybe more gold and silver coins just appear in monsters' hoards just as mystically as those monsters appear in dungeons... :rolleyes: In any case the end result would seem to be that D&D precious metal coins have far less intrinsic value than they historically did - a king's ransom can't be carried around in one sack. Of course, the historical value of coinage varied enormously nevermind in relation to each other; the things varied very considerably in mass and purity (not in the least as rulers had a habit of balancing the accounts by throwing in various additives, which duly devalued the new coins somewhat) and hence buying power, moneylenders and the like tended to literally cut corners with them as their service fee... you get the idea. Not to mention that decimal exchange rates were quite rare - for if the old computer RPG Darklands is to be believed, Medieval German coinage went roughly on a 8-12-1 hierarchy (8 pfennings is 1 groschen, 12 groschen is 1 gold florin)... Premodern economies were very much bargain economies, and while many rulers tried to impose at least guideline exchange rates for various coins of their own the sheer number and variety of coins of different origins and quality meant haggling and the general opinion on a given coin's value was quite important in transactions. Simplifying matters in this field is something FRPG developers can be excused for doing in the interests of simplicity.
Sucineri 11-17-04, 09:38 AM	I also believe that the D&D world's economy is based off of the silver piece, not the gold piece. Plus they got magic items which would be worth WAY more than anything that we ever had on earth, and they have TONS of these magic items. In the D&D worlds, they know how to mine better and MORE than we ever were able to, so they are way oversaturated with wealth as it is. So that totally makes sense why gold and platinum aren't worth nearly as much as it is in our real world.
tarkin 11-17-04, 11:14 AM	More importantly than that, gold and silver are NOT a "set value". Their value fluctuates tremoundously, both within a country and between countries. Worse, the more you have, the less it buys. In the real world, near an area where people are mining gold, frankly, the value of gold is significantly less. High wealth generation drives local inflation up. (Which is why Pizza in NYC costs more than Pizza in Poedunk Nebraska). Adventurers are basically walking gold mines. When they kill a creature and take it's treasure back to town, they flood the town with new cash, creating local inflation. The prices in the DMG assume that you are an adventurer and that therefore whereever you go is undergoing some temporary inflation.
magnoliafan_999 11-17-04, 02:14 PM	All very good points. It's just the idea that bothers me. Simply too many precious coins. Maybe I'll make a game with a sea-shell/fallen leaf economy!
Thelon Fairblade 11-17-04, 02:44 PM	In my just-ended campaign, I actually implemented variant coinage across three human kingdoms, and for each major race. Some races used platinum, some didn't (dwarves had "plates" and "half-plates" of platinum/gold mix). Gold coins from different areas varied in worth - one kingdom's coins were larger and weighed more, but were impure and actually valued less; another's had intrinsic artistic and collector value beyond its mere metal value. It was fun and interesting at first, then quickly fell by the wayside at the game progressed. The only nonstandard coin that remained in use throughout the campaign were "crowns", worth 20 gp. Next game, though, I'm thinking to make a couple scale changes. Like 10 CP to an SP, 10 SP to a silver scale (the new "electrum"), 10 silver scales to a gold eagle, and 10 gold eagles to a gold crown. Then 50 gold crowns to a platinum dragon. Ah, but in reality, that's just inconvenient. Easy enough to say a +1 sword costs 2315 "silver scales" or "GP" or whatever... the rules, treasures, and prices all still a based on that coin that occupies the "GP" position.