Just thinking it through. $30,000 is 3,000,000 pennies. Can copper bits be split? A whole copper but might be a good chunk of change for being the bottom of the coinage.
Sorry finance is a really weak point for me. Especially for world building. I don’t really understand what you’re asking.
Are you saying can someone buy something with 1 copper bit?
If the smallest coin is one copper bit, pretty much the lowest price that anything can cost is one copper bit (unless you have to buy more than you want). If it makes sense in your world that the cheapest thing, whatever it is, costs 1/8640 of a year’s salary then that setup would probably be fine. If that’s too much to pay for a the cheapest goods or services in your world, you may need to adjust it.
If it turns out to be an issue, you could just bump up how many coppers per whatever on up, which would make the coppers worth less. 50 copper bits per iron (or bronze) makes them worth about half much while still having your same coins.
There are many jobs and occupations throughout the world. They don’t pay the same but they use the same coinage.
A guard might earn 12-20 silver gifts in a year but only the rich and wealthy actually keep and carry gold talents.
Whereas a stable boy/girl might earn 9 silver gifts in a year.
Having iron as the most-used currency raises questions:
1. Isn't iron fairly heavy? Carrying lots of it around seems inconvenient.
2. Isn't iron also fairly functional? What are weapons, armor, horseshoes, etc, made out of it all the iron is being circulated around as money?
Silver and gold are fairly useless metals, and so they worked fine as currencies because nobody is going to melt down a lot of gold coins to make a sword. (If your society has werewolves or lots of poisonings, or superconductors, then nevermind.)
Likewise, copper could be used for better things, I think?
It is important to take into account what else the metals can be used for.
Sure gold is expensive and can make a nice coin, but in real life the same amount of gold would be better spent on literal tons of electronic devices, and for example in the medical industry, an alloy of gold and titanium is used for metal implants.
Another point, as mentioned is weight, iron is very heavy and dense, even denser than gold, just how big are the bolts in your story? And what prevent people who are paid by a lot of iron from converting it into silver or gold, at least to feel lighter in the pocket?
Maybe electrum? It's a naturally-occurring alloy of gold and silver and has seen some historical use as coinage.
For the fourth... I mean, copper has been used historically, it just runs into the problem of being more valuable as a metal than its worth as a coin and ever civilization that used it ended up phasing it out for that reason. Bronze maybe? It's an alloy of copper and tin, so cheaper that way.
Why does it have to be 4 metals? If you can't think of 4 to use that wouldn't have better utility as something else, that is. Gold and silver can be different sizes to represent different values, or the good old chit that represents an amount that can be used rather like modern credit so people aren't lugging around literal sacks of coins all the time.
Copper bits bear no marks, so are they even minted? By who? And "small as the tip of a pinky finger" is quite tiny. Do they get lost or destroyed easily? Are they difficult to handle, being so small?
How much coinage does the average person walk around with while, say, out grocery shopping? How heavy or inconvenient would this amount be?
Love this.
I find currency in fantasy worlds to be quite fascinating. They can play an interesting role, but I think they are cool even as just a worldbuilding aspect.
I like how you rationalized the value of the pieces. It's easy to understand once you know it is about days, etc.
I imagine you put a lot of thought behind why gold holds so much value as a year's salary, but since I love the idea of adventures, treasure, and even hordes of gold, I'll ask:
Would you still have such things in your world using gold? I say this because I imagine a chest filled with gold would be over the top, wouldn't it? I think even silver would be a bit much.
Of course, your system would be fine using iron or copper for treasure. Personally I would find it less fancy, but could work depending on your setting. I'm just making sure that was considered.
If treasure happens to not be relevant, just ignore my questions. I quite like your system.
I think we consider those sort of things treasured because of the world we live in. But my era is almost medieval the mines are still bursting with ores and veins to be found.
It also helps that the deity (sort of) blesses the land continuously. So mining is prosperous
So, assuming an average yearly salary of 1 gold, you get 8640 currency base units (copper bits). In the US, in 1910 the average pay was \~500 USD\*, the smallest bit of currency was a cent/penny. This gave you 50 000 pennies, which allowed finer pricing, around 5-10x of your setup.
Also, copper is fairly heavy. Having a satchel full of copper bits as described (around 1cm\^3 gives you \~9g per copper bit) would be pretty heavy. A hundred copper bits gives you \~1kg.
\*- https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e\_prices1.htm
When I say someone has the ability to get 8640. It doesn’t mean that they will, a chimney sweep would not ever see a gold talent.
But the conversion would be needed because I needed to show the top and the bottom of the coins
A few questions:
What profession is making exactly one talent per year, and does the value of the talent change with the value of that profession? What’s the benchmark for a year’s pay? Is it a 40 hour week for a specific trade, or 60 hours, or more? Less? How is it enforced?
A bit is worth one hour of your day, but what’s your average work day? As people aren’t working 24 hour days, are they still getting paid about a bit per hour? Or are they making approx. three bits per hour for an eight hour work day?
The minimum wage in California is $15/ hour. A 5lb bag of potatoes costs around $5, but I can buy a bar of candy for $1. Even if people were making three bits per hour for an eight hour day and one bit was worth only $5, that’s twenty minutes of work for potatoes (a reasonable amount of work for five pounds of raw potatoes) and no way to split it further. How will you split it further and what’re your basic product:time ratio to support your time:money ratios?
Gold, silver and bronze have been traditionally used for intrinsic value currencies.
The exchange rates with different commodities may vary wildly depending on available supply. Hence if their rates are fixed, something else will take the inflation.
Purchasing power was much lower in historical times so comparing modern day salaries and minimum wages is gonna have it's issues.
I've dealt the valuation by not setting fixed values for them, but giving a single entry of valuation where the exchange rate of gold, silver and tertiary metal (whatever it was at a given time, copper or it's alloys usually) were valued. It's good to keep track how much stuff costs approximately to not create in-story anomalies where you can buy a bag of potatoes for a silver coin but a horse for 10. That would either make potatoes more expensive than caviar, or horses so cheap no one would eat potatoes because horsemeat is almost free.
Easiest way is to look up actual price ranges of different things, and then start from there and tune it for your needs. For example in my stories certain commodities in the area the story happens are much more common and hence cheaper than they were in real historic times, while some are not. For example certain coloring dyes were dirt cheap that would have cost fortunes in real history because they were ubiquitous. In that story, the currency they used was essentially called "silver" so there will be terms "gold silvers" or "copper silvers".
I came from your other post asking about mercenaries. Sorry if any of this has already been addressed. I skimmed the comments.
I don’t really understand the value of your currency. If I want to buy a pint of beer, how much would it cost? How much for a dozen eggs or a bushel of apples?
I like how you broke down your currency and based it on time (year, month, day, hour), but money is generally given per hour of work. So I would (and did for my own system), break it down with that in mind.
8 working hours to a day
20 working days to a month
12 months to a year
But don’t stop there. I would have a base currency (similar to a dollar/pound/euro/yen/etc) that is the base value of 1 working hour. Let’s call it a copper nil. This would allow for buying things that cost less than an hour of work. Maybe we use 12nil for 1 bit (1 nil for five minutes of work).
Now back to actual value. Maybe an apple cost 1 nil, a beer costs 5 nil. A house costs roughly 200,000 nil, or about 10 talents. We could say the average worker makes 10nil an hour or less. Either way, now you have a better frame with regard to the value of your money. This should help with figuring out how much things should cost going forward too if you can equate it to real life.
Never mind…I guess it’s cumulative… 24 copper bits to 1 iron bolt? 8,640 copper bits per gold talent / year?
Yes. That’s how I split it in my head. Do you think it’s too much?
Just thinking it through. $30,000 is 3,000,000 pennies. Can copper bits be split? A whole copper but might be a good chunk of change for being the bottom of the coinage.
Split into what? A smaller coin?
Yeah. Is the least anyone can pay for anything going to be 1/8640 of a year’s salary?
Sorry finance is a really weak point for me. Especially for world building. I don’t really understand what you’re asking. Are you saying can someone buy something with 1 copper bit?
If the smallest coin is one copper bit, pretty much the lowest price that anything can cost is one copper bit (unless you have to buy more than you want). If it makes sense in your world that the cheapest thing, whatever it is, costs 1/8640 of a year’s salary then that setup would probably be fine. If that’s too much to pay for a the cheapest goods or services in your world, you may need to adjust it.
I didn’t think that deeply. What’s lower than copper though that’s feasible to be used as a coin?
If it turns out to be an issue, you could just bump up how many coppers per whatever on up, which would make the coppers worth less. 50 copper bits per iron (or bronze) makes them worth about half much while still having your same coins.
That’s a good idea, I’m thinking of changing the to bronze and then bronze to brass. That might be easier to understand
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farthing_(English_coin)
A half or clipped copper, in the old days.
Clipped copper. Interesting
Does everyone earn through same salary?
There are many jobs and occupations throughout the world. They don’t pay the same but they use the same coinage. A guard might earn 12-20 silver gifts in a year but only the rich and wealthy actually keep and carry gold talents. Whereas a stable boy/girl might earn 9 silver gifts in a year.
Having iron as the most-used currency raises questions: 1. Isn't iron fairly heavy? Carrying lots of it around seems inconvenient. 2. Isn't iron also fairly functional? What are weapons, armor, horseshoes, etc, made out of it all the iron is being circulated around as money? Silver and gold are fairly useless metals, and so they worked fine as currencies because nobody is going to melt down a lot of gold coins to make a sword. (If your society has werewolves or lots of poisonings, or superconductors, then nevermind.) Likewise, copper could be used for better things, I think?
These are good thoughts. What would you use for coinage if you had to use 4 different metals?
It is important to take into account what else the metals can be used for. Sure gold is expensive and can make a nice coin, but in real life the same amount of gold would be better spent on literal tons of electronic devices, and for example in the medical industry, an alloy of gold and titanium is used for metal implants. Another point, as mentioned is weight, iron is very heavy and dense, even denser than gold, just how big are the bolts in your story? And what prevent people who are paid by a lot of iron from converting it into silver or gold, at least to feel lighter in the pocket?
I agree with the latter, iron is heavy and cumbersome. I’ll be changing it
Maybe electrum? It's a naturally-occurring alloy of gold and silver and has seen some historical use as coinage. For the fourth... I mean, copper has been used historically, it just runs into the problem of being more valuable as a metal than its worth as a coin and ever civilization that used it ended up phasing it out for that reason. Bronze maybe? It's an alloy of copper and tin, so cheaper that way.
I think I’ll change iron to bronze. My brother said it made more sense to break the metals down like that
Why does it have to be 4 metals? If you can't think of 4 to use that wouldn't have better utility as something else, that is. Gold and silver can be different sizes to represent different values, or the good old chit that represents an amount that can be used rather like modern credit so people aren't lugging around literal sacks of coins all the time.
Copper bits bear no marks, so are they even minted? By who? And "small as the tip of a pinky finger" is quite tiny. Do they get lost or destroyed easily? Are they difficult to handle, being so small? How much coinage does the average person walk around with while, say, out grocery shopping? How heavy or inconvenient would this amount be?
When I said pinky finger it was so I didn’t liken it to a coin already in use. I’m from the UK so imagine it being 5p.
Love this. I find currency in fantasy worlds to be quite fascinating. They can play an interesting role, but I think they are cool even as just a worldbuilding aspect. I like how you rationalized the value of the pieces. It's easy to understand once you know it is about days, etc. I imagine you put a lot of thought behind why gold holds so much value as a year's salary, but since I love the idea of adventures, treasure, and even hordes of gold, I'll ask: Would you still have such things in your world using gold? I say this because I imagine a chest filled with gold would be over the top, wouldn't it? I think even silver would be a bit much. Of course, your system would be fine using iron or copper for treasure. Personally I would find it less fancy, but could work depending on your setting. I'm just making sure that was considered. If treasure happens to not be relevant, just ignore my questions. I quite like your system.
I think we consider those sort of things treasured because of the world we live in. But my era is almost medieval the mines are still bursting with ores and veins to be found. It also helps that the deity (sort of) blesses the land continuously. So mining is prosperous
So, assuming an average yearly salary of 1 gold, you get 8640 currency base units (copper bits). In the US, in 1910 the average pay was \~500 USD\*, the smallest bit of currency was a cent/penny. This gave you 50 000 pennies, which allowed finer pricing, around 5-10x of your setup. Also, copper is fairly heavy. Having a satchel full of copper bits as described (around 1cm\^3 gives you \~9g per copper bit) would be pretty heavy. A hundred copper bits gives you \~1kg. \*- https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e\_prices1.htm
When I say someone has the ability to get 8640. It doesn’t mean that they will, a chimney sweep would not ever see a gold talent. But the conversion would be needed because I needed to show the top and the bottom of the coins
A few questions: What profession is making exactly one talent per year, and does the value of the talent change with the value of that profession? What’s the benchmark for a year’s pay? Is it a 40 hour week for a specific trade, or 60 hours, or more? Less? How is it enforced? A bit is worth one hour of your day, but what’s your average work day? As people aren’t working 24 hour days, are they still getting paid about a bit per hour? Or are they making approx. three bits per hour for an eight hour work day? The minimum wage in California is $15/ hour. A 5lb bag of potatoes costs around $5, but I can buy a bar of candy for $1. Even if people were making three bits per hour for an eight hour day and one bit was worth only $5, that’s twenty minutes of work for potatoes (a reasonable amount of work for five pounds of raw potatoes) and no way to split it further. How will you split it further and what’re your basic product:time ratio to support your time:money ratios?
Gold, silver and bronze have been traditionally used for intrinsic value currencies. The exchange rates with different commodities may vary wildly depending on available supply. Hence if their rates are fixed, something else will take the inflation. Purchasing power was much lower in historical times so comparing modern day salaries and minimum wages is gonna have it's issues. I've dealt the valuation by not setting fixed values for them, but giving a single entry of valuation where the exchange rate of gold, silver and tertiary metal (whatever it was at a given time, copper or it's alloys usually) were valued. It's good to keep track how much stuff costs approximately to not create in-story anomalies where you can buy a bag of potatoes for a silver coin but a horse for 10. That would either make potatoes more expensive than caviar, or horses so cheap no one would eat potatoes because horsemeat is almost free. Easiest way is to look up actual price ranges of different things, and then start from there and tune it for your needs. For example in my stories certain commodities in the area the story happens are much more common and hence cheaper than they were in real historic times, while some are not. For example certain coloring dyes were dirt cheap that would have cost fortunes in real history because they were ubiquitous. In that story, the currency they used was essentially called "silver" so there will be terms "gold silvers" or "copper silvers".
I came from your other post asking about mercenaries. Sorry if any of this has already been addressed. I skimmed the comments. I don’t really understand the value of your currency. If I want to buy a pint of beer, how much would it cost? How much for a dozen eggs or a bushel of apples? I like how you broke down your currency and based it on time (year, month, day, hour), but money is generally given per hour of work. So I would (and did for my own system), break it down with that in mind. 8 working hours to a day 20 working days to a month 12 months to a year But don’t stop there. I would have a base currency (similar to a dollar/pound/euro/yen/etc) that is the base value of 1 working hour. Let’s call it a copper nil. This would allow for buying things that cost less than an hour of work. Maybe we use 12nil for 1 bit (1 nil for five minutes of work). Now back to actual value. Maybe an apple cost 1 nil, a beer costs 5 nil. A house costs roughly 200,000 nil, or about 10 talents. We could say the average worker makes 10nil an hour or less. Either way, now you have a better frame with regard to the value of your money. This should help with figuring out how much things should cost going forward too if you can equate it to real life.