From: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Alternative coinage
Date: 8 Feb 2001 23:34:08 GMT
Message-ID: <[s l rn 986 be 7 4 g 3 bradds] at [zany.cup.hp.com]>
Historically, most coins were made of silver until the very late middle
ages and early renaissance. Gold coins were more common in Italy and the
Byzantine empire, but trying to maintain currency in two different
metals (gold and silver) was a frequent cause of economic trouble,
because of the fluctuation of relative values. Following is some
information on historic coins and values that you may be able to use in
your game. I'll focus mainly on 13th century Europe, for two reasons:
the feudal system was in full swing, and coinage was still fairly
uniform throughout Europe, which matches your typical D&D campaign.
First, I'll discuss values. Often, there was no particular coin
associated with a value; the only universal coin appears to be the penny
(and its non-English equivalents). Each denomination was based on some
fraction of the value of a pound of silver.
[Note: the weight of a "pound" has varied considerably over the years.
Nowadays, a pound weighs 7,000 grains, but we still weigh precious
metals in Troy pounds, which weigh only 5,760 grains, divided into
twelve Troy ounces. Around the 13th century, England used the Tower
pound instead, which was an even lighter 5,400 grains. A Tower ounce is
a little more than a US ounce, and a Troy ounce is a little heavier
still. Here's what happened. Charlemagne defined the "pennyweight" as 24
grains, 240 pennies to the pound. That's the same as Troy weight. In the
12th century or so, the value of silver went up, and England changed the
pennyweight to 22.5 grains: that's Tower weight. A couple centuries
later, they switched back to 24-grain pennyweights, but by that time a
penny no longer weighed a pennyweight. Either system is fine for RPG
use.]
Anyway, currency throughout most of Europe was based on the Roman and
Carolingian standard, which specified the pound, mark, shilling, and
penny as the basic units of currency.
A pound is a pound of silver: 240 pence.
A mark is two-thirds of a pound of silver: 160 pence.
A shilling is a twentieth of a pound of silver: 12 pence.
A penny is 1/240 of a pound (a pennyweight).
Don't forget that that's a Tower or Troy pound; a pound of silver weighs
3/4 to 5/6 of a modern pound.
Those are the English names; here are some others:
English German French Italian Latin
pound pfund livre lire libra
shilling schilling sou (sol) soldi solidus
penny pfennig dernier denari denarius
half-penny halbpfennig obolos ? obulus
Most of the different denominations only existed in accountants'
ledgers; the mark in particular never had a coin to represent it in
England. Pennies are by far the most common coin; half-pennies and
farthings (1/4 pennies) also existed, often by cutting pennies in halves
and quarters. In England, the largest coin minted throughout most of the
middle ages was the groat, worth 4 pence and about the size of a US
quarter.
As noted above, a silver penny weighed 22.5 grains, or about 300 pennies
to the (modern) pound. In England, pennies were made of fine (92%)
silver and were a little smaller than a US penny. In Italy, they were
made of debased (about 33%) silver, and a little larger than a US penny.
Larger coins, if they existed, would be made of fine silver to keep them
at a reasonable size.
A groat would be about the size of a US nickel, and a shilling, if it
had actually existed in coin form, would be about the size of a US
"silver" dollar coin (the old Eisenhower dollars, not the new Sacajawea
dollars). In truth, no coin that size existed until the 16th century in
England, and by that time silver was worth less, so the dollar-sized
coin, called a "crown," was worth 5 shillings.
Gold coins were very rare, except for the Byzantine bezant and the
Italian florin. The florin weighed about 72 grains, about the size of a
US nickel. It was valued at 29 soldi (shillings).
In general, a peasant or unskilled laborer earned about a penny a day
plus room and "board" (usually harvested by the peasant himself), a
skilled laborer or craftsman made about a shilling a day, and a master
tradesman could earn about a pound a day. Here's what a penny could buy:
a chicken
about 3 dozen eggs
3 gallons of beer
1/2 gallon of wine
a night's stay at a "decent" inn
Even as the value of money changed over time, each of those things were
worth a little more than a peasant's daily wage. The Player's Handbook
also lists each of them as costing about a silver piece; thus, I'll set
a penny equal to 1 sp.
Here are some English coins and values, their D&D equivalents,
approximate weights (in coins per pound), and a similarly-sized US coin:
Amount: Pennies: D&D: Metal: Weight: US coin:
farthing 1/4 penny 2 1/2 cp silver 1200/lb
half-penny 1/2 penny 5 cp silver 600/lb
penny 1 penny 1 sp silver 300/lb penny*
groat 4 pence 4 sp silver 75/lb quarter
shilling 12 pence 1 gp silver 25/lb dollar
mark 160 pence 1 1/3 pp
pound 240 pence 2 pp
[*] slightly smaller than a penny
Note that the shilling (gp) is worth 12 pence (sp), not 10. You can deal
with this one of two ways: change the value of the "gold piece" from 10
silver pieces to 12, or change the weight of the shilling from 12
pennyweight to 10. I actually recommend keeping 1 shilling = 12 pence,
but some players don't like this. If you do, treat any D&D value in gold
pieces as "shillings" and any values in silver pieces as "pence." Thus,
if a price is listed as 10 gp, it costs 10 shilling or 120 pence; if the
price is 96 sp, it costs 8 shilling or 96 pence.
The mark was never a coin, and there were no pound coins until the 16th
century or so, but I've listed them on the table for conversion
purposes. Actually, there were no shilling coins either, but I've listed
a hypothetical coin of about the right size.
Here are some Italian coins:
Amount: Pennies: D&D: Metal: Weight: US coin:
denari 1 denari 1 sp silver 100/lb penny*
soldi 12 denari 1 gp silver 25/lb dollar
lire 240 denari 2 pp
florin 360 denari 3 pp gold 100/lb nickel
[*] slightly larger than a penny
Again, the soldi (shilling) is a fictitious coin, but if it existed it
would be about the size of a silver dollar.
Fast forward a few centuries, and European coinage has changed radically
(although it still has the same 1 pound = 20 shilling = 240 pence
relationships). Inflation and dishonesty has made coins much less
valuable; in about 300 years, a shilling has fallen to about the value
of a penny. Coins steadly grow smaller (or less pure). Inflation hits
some areas harder than others; Italy in particular has trouble caused by
the different values of gold and silver. (In the 13th century, a florin
is worth 29 soldi; in the 16th, it's worth closer to 75 soldi. Since
wages are set in gold but paid in silver, that means that people are
effectively earning less than half of what they were 300 years before.)
The French sou, once the equal of an English shilling, is worth only
about half a penny in the late middle ages.
Also, pennies eventually grow so small, even when made of debased
silver, that they are no longer convenient. Most areas either stop using
pennies (like France, where the sou is the smallest practical coin) or
start minting them from copper instead of silver (like England, where a
penny was still "worth something"). The standards for prices are still
about the same (a bottle of wine is still a day's pay for a peasant),
but the coins are worth much less. This leads to a proliferation of
coins; England introduces shillings (by now only about the size of a
quarter) crowns (the first actual dollar-sized coin), worth 5 shillings,
and gold sovereigns (worth a pound). If you want to play in this era,
here are some reasonable English coins:
Amount: Pennies: D&D: Metal: US coin:
half-penny 1/2 penny 1/2 cp copper nickel
penny 1 penny 1 cp copper quarter
groat 4 pence 4 cp silver penny
shilling 12 pence 1 sp silver quarter
crown 60 pence 5 sp silver dollar
half-sov. 120 pence 1 gp gold nickel
sovereign 240 pence 2 gp gold quarter
I haven't researched this era as thoroughly, so the coin sizes may be a
bit off, and I haven't figured out the weights at all (although you can
probably make a good guess based on the older coin sizes and weights).
Those of you running a late-middle-ages campaign may prefer these coins,
because they use the same metals as D&D coins, are about the same size,
and the whole "1 shilling = 12 pence" problem is shifted into the
copper-piece range where it's less likely to give your players a
headache.
I'll be using the older weights and sizes in my own game. Unfortunately,
my players have already begun to rebel at the shillings, pounds, and
pence, but I'm sure they'll come around sooner or later. *evil grin*
Let me know if you have information to add or corrections where I've
made stupid mistakes!
--
Bradd W. Szonye Work: [b--a--d] at [cup.hp.com]
Software Design Engineer Home: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net]
Hewlett-Packard Cupertino Site, iFL Phone: 408-447-4832
From: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Alternative coinage
Date: 9 Feb 2001 20:04:34 GMT
Message-ID: <[s l rn 988 jh 8 5 qh bradds] at [zany.cup.hp.com]>
>In article <[s l rn 986 be 7 4 g 3 bradds] at [zany.cup.hp.com]>,
> [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye) wrote:
>>
>> Let me know if you have information to add or corrections where I've
>> made stupid mistakes!
Brandon Blackmoor <[B B lackmoor] at [blackgate.net]> wrote:
>I like this a lot. Thanks!
As usual, I'm glad to help out. A couple of minor corrections: the
French penny is the "denier," not "dernier," and the singular form of
"soldi" is "soldo." On re-reading, I noticed a couple of other minor
errors, but nothing that should cause major grief.
One thing I'm not too sure about is the relative value of gold and
silver. Depending on the source and the time period, I've seen gold
worth anywhere between 10 and 100 times the same weight of silver. One
thing that makes it hard to judge is whether you're talking about fine
silver (used in English coins) or debased silver (used elsewhere in
Europe, especially Italy).
By the way, Europeans distinguished between three types of coin silver:
Fine or Sterling silver is 92% pure -- that's what the English used for
coins, and possibly one of the reasons why English money retained its
value much longer than French and Italian money. "White" silver is at
least 50% fine and retains its silvery appearance. "Black" silver is
less than half fine; the alloying metals (mostly copper) are much more
obvious in black silver.
Italian money is a bit confusing, because they actually had three sets
of coinage: some gold (the florin), some white silver, and some black
silver. In England, which used Sterling silver for coins, gold coins
seemed to be about 10 times as valuable as silver coins (by weight). In
Italy, where black silver was fairly common, the gold coins were closer
to 100 times as valuable as the silver coins (again by weight). Perhaps
the difference reflects the Italian practice of using only a sliver of
real silver (and eventually switching to just-plain-copper coins).
I'm sure there are some folks out there who know numismatics much better
than I do, and I welcome them to expound on my admittedly amateur study
of this.
--
Bradd W. Szonye Work: [b--a--d] at [cup.hp.com]
Software Design Engineer Home: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net]
Hewlett-Packard Cupertino Site, iFL Phone: 408-447-4832
From: [b j m 10] at [cornell.edu] (Bryan J. Maloney)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Alternative coinage
Date: 10 Feb 2001 03:13:06 GMT
Message-ID: <962bk2$7n$[REDACTED] at [news01.cit.cornell.edu]>
[b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye) wrote in
<[s l rn 988 jh 8 5 qh bradds] at [zany.cup.hp.com]>:
>silver. Depending on the source and the time period, I've seen gold
>worth anywhere between 10 and 100 times the same weight of silver. One
In England, France, the Netherlands, and German lands, between 1300-1500, it
was astonishingly constant (according to Metz's database) at around 11:1 value,
with some very short-term violent fluctuations during wartimes. This is
comparing "Feingewicht Silber" to "Feingewicht Gold".
>By the way, Europeans distinguished between three types of coin silver:
>Fine or Sterling silver is 92% pure -- that's what the English used for
>coins, and possibly one of the reasons why English money retained its
Notes: Sterling is exactly 92.5% pure, or exactly 37/40 (the ancient
and still honored "official" definition of Sterling).
Sterling was not the best quality, although the best quality of coinage silver
didn't exist officially until at least 1497, when the Real was decreed in
Castile to be minted at 11d 4gr purity (93.06%). This wasn't always observed,
of course, but once American silver started flowing into Spanish coffers, it
was usually at about this level of purity.
Of course, these days, it is possible to purchase collectable coins at .999
fineness, but they aren't suitable for circulation. Coin metals are extremely
soft, and very pure silver highly reactive.
Coinage gold most commonly seems to have been 22 carat, or 91.67%.
Then there is electrum, a gold and silver alloy, which originally seems to have
been 55.5% gold but fell to as low as 40% gold. It was mostly used along the
eastern Mediterranean.
> "Black" silver is
>less than half fine; the alloying metals (mostly copper) are much more
>obvious in black silver.
This is also called "billon" and it was used as a last-ditch attempt to avoid
official copper coinage in Europe. Eventually, inflation got to the point that
copper had to be officially adopted by the late 1600s in England, although
France and Italy had been using it for about 200 years beforehand.
What is interesting is that the Roman empire had enough economic confidence
from her citizenry to successfully use bronze coins up to the fall of
Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
From: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Alternative coinage
Date: 10 Feb 2001 05:00:11 GMT
Message-ID: <[s l rn 989 itq fqj bradds] at [ogre.localdomain]>
Bryan J. Maloney <[b j m 10] at [cornell.edu]> wrote:
>[b--ad--s] at [concentric.net] (Bradd W. Szonye) wrote in
><[s l rn 988 jh 8 5 qh bradds] at [zany.cup.hp.com]>:
>
>>silver. Depending on the source and the time period, I've seen gold
>>worth anywhere between 10 and 100 times the same weight of silver. One
>
>In England, France, the Netherlands, and German lands, between 1300-1500, it
>was astonishingly constant (according to Metz's database) at around 11:1 value,
>with some very short-term violent fluctuations during wartimes. This is
>comparing "Feingewicht Silber" to "Feingewicht Gold".
Okay, that matches what information I have about English coinage. In
1552, an 11g gold coin was worth 20s (about 1.8s/gram), and a 31g silver
crown was worth 5s (about 0.16s/gram), which is 11:1 as you say. In
1817, the gold pound coin was 8g (2.5s/gram) and the crown was about 29g
(0.17s/gram), which is about 15:1. Modern values aren't all that
different; IIRC, gold:silver is currently in the neighborhood of 20:1.
What I don't get are the numbers I've heard for values of the Italian
florin and soldi. As far as I can tell, the silver content in all
European coins was still fairly similar in the 13th century, but a 4.8g
florin was worth 29 soldi (6s/gram), but the 1.5g of silver in billon
denari (about the same amount as the silver in an English penny, but in
a larger, less pure coin) was only worth a penny (0.06s/gram): that's
about a 100:1 ratio. Even if the denari had only a *total* weight of
1.5g (and thus a silver weight of about a half gram), the ratio is still
30:1, which is off by a factor of three from the English values. A
couple of centuries later, the gold in a florin was worth about 75 soldi
piccolo, which indicates either rising gold prices, increased debasement
of the billon silver, or (most likely) both.
Where does that factor of 3-10 come from? Did I overestimate the amount
of silver in denari, was gold worth more at that time (unlikely, since
gold seems to have outpaced silver almost all the time, and it's not
worth that much now), or was the Italian economy just that screwed up?
>>By the way, Europeans distinguished between three types of coin silver:
>>Fine or Sterling silver is 92% pure -- that's what the English used for
>>coins, and possibly one of the reasons why English money retained its
>
>Notes: Sterling is exactly 92.5% pure, or exactly 37/40 (the ancient
>and still honored "official" definition of Sterling).
Yep. Sorry, forgot the other 1/2%.
>Of course, these days, it is possible to purchase collectable coins at
>.999 fineness, but they aren't suitable for circulation. Coin metals
>are extremely soft, and very pure silver highly reactive.
>
>Coinage gold most commonly seems to have been 22 carat, or 91.67%.
Right. England experimented with 24 carat gold coins, but they were too
soft, and Elizabeth switched to the 22 carat standard.
>Then there is electrum, a gold and silver alloy, which originally seems
>to have been 55.5% gold but fell to as low as 40% gold. It was mostly
>used along the eastern Mediterranean.
AFAICT, it was always mainly a Greek coin metal, and indeed the name is
Greek. Can't remember what it means.
>>"Black" silver is less than half fine; the alloying metals (mostly
>>copper) are much more obvious in black silver.
>
>This is also called "billon"...
Right, thanks! Forgot to mention that too.
>...and it was used as a last-ditch attempt to avoid official copper
>coinage in Europe. Eventually, inflation got to the point that copper
>had to be officially adopted by the late 1600s in England, although
>France and Italy had been using it for about 200 years beforehand.
It seems that the mints tried to maintain the illusion that they were
using "real" silver for as long as possible; eventually, they broke down
and used billon despite the fact it looked more like copper, with that
little silver. Italy seems to have given up first, giving up the facade
totally and going to plain copper.
It's amazing that England's money held its value for so long -- into the
current day, in fact -- when the rest of Europe had so much trouble with
money. By the start of the Industrial Age, the livre (franc) and pound
had gone from being equivalent to a 20:1 exchange rate. That's over 100%
relative devaluation per century. Now, I've heard that that was the
average inflation rate per century throughout Europe; was France typical
or worse than average? (Another way to put it: did the English penny
maintain its value throughout the Middle Ages? If not, how much did it
decrease in value? Judging by penny weights, I would guess about 25% per
century.)
>What is interesting is that the Roman empire had enough economic
>confidence from her citizenry to successfully use bronze coins up to
>the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
Constantinople also managed to continue minting gold coins without
totally wrecking the economy. I wonder why the Eastern Empire managed to
succeed financially when the Italians did so poorly; one of the
explanations I've heard for their rotten economy (besides the influx of
metal from the new world) is the difficulty of maintaining a 2-metal
standard.
--
Bradd W. Szonye Work: [b--a--d] at [cup.hp.com]
Software Design Engineer Home: [b--ad--s] at [concentric.net]
Hewlett-Packard Cupertino Site, iFL Phone: 408-447-4832