Weight of coins

[john100]

Hello,

I have a small question. Does anyone knows or has calculated the weight of Palladium coins ?
I'm stuck and cannot find an answer. According to the Main Book, page 275, 2nd edition gold is 2.500 gold/pound or 156 gold/ounce. So far is simple.
Major circulation coins usually are 10, 20, 25, 50, 100 gold.
Even today gold coins are not 100 % gold. So maybe in Palladium are 75 % gold or 50 % in extreme cases.
So a 100 gold coin would weigh between 18 grams to 24 (at 75 % purity) or 36 (at 50%) - or 0.66, 0.85 or 1.27 ounces.
Ok - that seems reasonable.
However while reading the treasure list from the adventure Secrets, Pirates & Mindprancer you have
- 150,000 one ounce gold coins: worth about 4 million - that would mean 26-27 gold / coin / one ounce, which is about one sixth of value of gold/ounce
So ?????????
In order for the math to ad up you would have coins of which the bullion value of a coin is around 17% of their face value . I don't know who would accept this money, not even in the medieval times. I can accept a small difference in different areas and times (in times of war a ruler might decrease the content of gold in the coins that it mints but that is only a temporary measure and you are asking for trouble - ounce the word is out people would search and hoard older coins, merchants would become reluctant to accept the new coins, etc -
Again - So ????????
And when you look in the same treasure list to the silver coins you have 50,000 three ounce silver coins: worth 250.000 in gold - which translates in one 3 ounce coins = 5 gold or 1.66 gold/ounce or 16*1.66 = 26.67 gold/pound of silver - that is 5.55 % of the value of the bullion silver. huh??? ???????????
In my opinion who wrote the adventure when he got to the treasure list, he just wrote some number there that looked pretty and that was it. Joke aside the adventure was called "The Pirates of Dragons Claw" in the Adventures in the Northern Wilderness, book 4 which was printed in 1989. The Main Book second edition - which specifies the value of gold was published in 1996 and currently the adventure is part of the Wolfen Empire Book which was printed in 2003. It vas just copy-paste and now one checked the number. No problem. But I would like to know or at least have some numbers - and that is that.
Actually the problem appeared when i tried to calculate the weight of a family or personal treasure and what it would take to transport it (strategic relocation in case of war or if the particularly person would .......let's say fall out of favor with the current ruler of the land, please no recommendation of conversion in gems, etc... is just an exercise in logistics)

So, anyone wants to take a try at guessing the weight of a 100 gold coin

[ShadowHawk]

Short of alchemy, 100% gold doesn't exist.

[sHaka]

Maybe just wing it with 20gc = 1lbs? If it sounds about right, play on and don't let it bog down the game.

[eliakon]

There is a discussion of this in the Library of Bletheread book. The short version of that is that the various coins are not pure metal, but instead special alloys (to make it harder to just 'print money'). Which helps with the "why don't you just smelt them down" and "how can different coins be worth different amounts" questions.

[Library Ogre]

My rule of thumb is to assign coins weights based on real-world coins, and work like that. I'd probably lean towards something like

1gp = dime
5gp = penny
10gp = nickel
25gp = quarter

It's not perfect, and it leads to some bad math, but it's immediate and tactile and gives people a sense of how big a hoard of thousands of coins actually is.

[john100]

My rule of thumb is to assign coins weights based on real-world coins, and work like that. I'd probably lean towards something like

1gp = dime
5gp = penny
10gp = nickel
25gp = quarter

It's not perfect, and it leads to some bad math, but it's immediate and tactile and gives people a sense of how big a hoard of thousands of coins actually is.

The logic is excellent.
It's not perfect because some current real coins have similar weights due to the fact that their value is not given by the value of their scrap metal.
Real US coins : cent: 2.5 grams , dime: 2.27 grams , nickel: 5 grams , quarter: 5.67 grams , half dollar: 11.34 grams . quarter: 5.67 grams, dollar 8.1 grams.

I would go with something similar but using real gold coins (since we are talking about hoards of coins) :
5gp = dime :2.27 grames
10gp = 1/10 oz = 3.11 grams (between a dime and a nickel)
25gp = 1/4 oz = 7.77 grams (smaller than a dollar)
50gp = 1/2 oz = 15.55 grams
100gp = 1 oz = 31.10 grams (American Gold Eagle)

And same principal to silver coins :
1sp = 1/10 oz = 3.11 grams (between a dime and a nickel)
5sp = 15.55 grams
10sp = 1 oz = 31.10 grams (American Silver Eagle)

[The Beast]

There's always Skyrim logic.

[arouetta]

My rule of thumb is to assign coins weights based on real-world coins, and work like that. I'd probably lean towards something like

1gp = dime
5gp = penny
10gp = nickel
25gp = quarter

It's not perfect, and it leads to some bad math, but it's immediate and tactile and gives people a sense of how big a hoard of thousands of coins actually is.

The logic is excellent.
It's not perfect because some current real coins have similar weights due to the fact that their value is not given by the value of their scrap metal.
Real US coins : cent: 2.5 grams , dime: 2.27 grams , nickel: 5 grams , quarter: 5.67 grams , half dollar: 11.34 grams . quarter: 5.67 grams, dollar 8.1 grams.

I would go with something similar but using real gold coins (since we are talking about hoards of coins) :
5gp = dime :2.27 grames
10gp = 1/10 oz = 3.11 grams (between a dime and a nickel)
25gp = 1/4 oz = 7.77 grams (smaller than a dollar)
50gp = 1/2 oz = 15.55 grams
100gp = 1 oz = 31.10 grams (American Gold Eagle)

And same principal to silver coins :
1sp = 1/10 oz = 3.11 grams (between a dime and a nickel)
5sp = 15.55 grams
10sp = 1 oz = 31.10 grams (American Silver Eagle)

I'm lost. I thought there was no "silver piece", that even silver money was considered gold pieces for purposes of currencies. That's what LoB made it sound like.

[kiralon]

but also in library of bletherad you donate 1gp or 5sp to stay per day (which makes it sound like 5sp = 1gp), it seems that sometimes gp to sp is dnd like (i.e. 10sp = 1gp etc), and sometimes the silver coins are made out to be equivalent in gp (i.e a 5gp silver coin).
But mostly its written that you get 1gp value silver coins and 25gp value silver coins.

[Library Ogre]

FWIW, in D&D, I like the older version of 20sp=1gp, letting me do 1sp=1USD. A GP is like having a $20.

[MaxxSterling]

I did the math on this once, based on real world and in game examples, because in Library of Bletherad it says an Old World Coin weighs 4 oz. So, I eyeballed and extrapolated some numbers that I thought were realistic. Anyhow, if I find that info, I'll post it. But in the meantime... What my characters ended up having to do was melt down all their coins into blocks and deal with it that way, because it's easier to drag around 100 lb blocks of gold then tens of thousands of coins. It was a real hassle, but the only weigh to realistically handle it. A character is going to find a million coins in a dragon hoard and walk out the door with it. In fact, they'll be lucky if they get enough to buy a low level rune weapon amongst all of them.