Relative Rarity of Precious Metals

I was OK at first with the whole decimal system of currency that they have in 3e, but the more we play, and the higher the characters get, the less I like it.

My biggest problem is the lack of complexity and general transparency across cultures/governments leaves the flavor pretty bland. I feel the need to retcon in some coinage, but I need some more background info. There is the matter of conversion between different currencies vs. melting down coins into their core components that I need to sift through. Add the complexity that my geography is based on North America in an alternate timeline.

To that end, I appeal to the historical geologists or metallurgists in the group.

What was the relative rarity of the classic precious metals (copper, silver, gold, platinum), using medieval/fantasy mining methods in the Old World? What if the same culture/technology developed, but on the continent of North America? What early colonial exploration (Africa, India, Central America, China) generated booms (and presumably deflation of value) of what metals? (e.g. I know scads of gold came from looting the Aztecs).
If medieval society developed on the continent of North America, would the currency be based on silver?

Discuss. Thanks.

Hey -- I'm with you on the too transparent complaint. I don't know a damn thing about availability of precious metals but I thought I'd throw out what I did in my campaign. After a particularly brutal disaster hit a city, in order to increase the relative value of gold and combat the threat of inflation, the city mint ruled that the city would convert from base 10 to base 12 currency.

I have an excellent link on this sort of thing, unfortunately it's on my PC at home, so I can't go into much detail now. One neat thing to note - since your campaign is in an alternate North America - is that platinum is only found in the new world. It was unknown in Europe before Columbus.

As for relative rarities, I'd generally go with the ratios in the PHB.

Other interesting note: the European economies were based on silver due to the rarity of gold. Several massive Silver mines were discovered in Germany in the 900-1100 AD time period, and supplied much of Europe's silver for the next few centuries. One mine, in fact, only just shut down in the last 20 years after 1,100 years of near-constant use!

Eventually, however, the mines were depleted to a point where they couldn't get any more silver out until pumps were developed to drain the lower areas. In real life, the depletion and the developement of the pumps were only seperated by 50 or so years.

Silver had a tendency to accumulate in hoards - kings treasure rooms, etc. New money only got made when new silver was found. This can be a big source of fluctuation in currency price - along with the above mentioned mines becoming depleted.

But this argument overlooks one fundamental reality. The plain truth is that there just are not enough precious metals in existence to serve as a practical source of hedges against inflation.

Consider this. If you took all the gold ever mined and stacked it up on a football field, it would barely be five feet high. At current prices, its total value wouldn't even be a trillion dollars, closer to $600 billion.

Add to this fact one more thing: that the vast bulk of that gold will never ever come onto the market. It will stay in central bank vaults for the next few billion years. Consider also that virtually all the new gold being mined is currently used up in fabrication.

What all this means is that just a few billion dollars of new deman would send the price of gold into orbit. The same situation exists with silver. Only about $3 billion in silver is produced a year. There is so little of it that the Hunt brothers were nearly able to corner the world market back in '79. Add the value of all the silver to that of all the gold, and it's still under $1 trillion.

from- http://www.cyberhaven.com/investors/inflationhedge.html

I think one important thing to understand is what a coin represents in pre-modern societies. In a modern society a coin is a token, a marker for so much value, backed ultimately by the issuing government, that they'll honour it to pay off debt.

A pre-modern coin is an actual piece of valuable material. The name or arms stamped onto the coin are a guarantee as to the quality of the metal that the coin is made of. Not that all coins were made of the same alloys (pure metals were rarely used since neither silver nor gold wear well in use). But if people (read moneychangers and international merchants) know that King Louis' coins are only four-fifths silver, and Bishop Odo's coins of the same weight are nine-tenths silver, then oddly enough they value the Bishop's coins more. Effectively, you are still dealing with bullion, it's just a shorthand method of knowing how much bullion was in each coin.

The net effect is that coins are international, at least coins issued by respected mints. Unless local or national rules apply, then in offering you coins to buy something, I am simply offering you a certain amount of bullion in return for that item. It matters not what coins I use, so long as you know just how much bullion is involved.

Using this in game, you can make coins from different regions have different values. If you keep a virtual gold piece value system as a backdrop, then people might find that the Bageran issued silver mark is worth 2gp, whilst those tiny silver grosschen that Count Armore rewarded you with are in fact only worth 5cp! In my own game I have a number of respected international currencies, which adventurers often deal in, and a great many local coinages. Away from their own territory these local coins are worth only 80% of their normal value, since they are assumed to be less pure by local traders! It adds an extra complication but it does mean that PCs actually plan long journeys, transferring coinage into interntionally-recognised values, even if it costs them money!

By the way, being tied to a bullion system has another peculiar effect. As a sovereign nation you still don't have control over the value of your coinage since the value of bullion versus other items shifts as more or less silver/gold is mined, and as bullion comes in from other areas or is siphoned off elsewhere. This means that you are subject to peculiar inflationary pressures which, lacking a sound economic theory, must look like the work of the devil! ("what do you mean that this loaf of bread know costs 3cp! When I was a lad it was only 2cp! You are a gouging bully!") Indeed the later Roman Empire was deeply concerned since huge amounts of Imperial silver were being sent to the lands of the East to buy luxury goods like silk and especially spices, and tried to limit citizens' use of spices!

It isn't easy to answer the question what's the ratio of value between silver and gold. It varied over time and location, but it can be pinned down. For your own campaign, you might set it as you please (though 20 to 25 to 1 seems realistic).

Hoping this helps rather than confuses!

Does anyone ever wonder why everything costs such an absolutely ludicrous sum of gold?

According to the documentation, there are about 50 gps to a pound.

That means that a recommended treasure level, for a level 10 encounter, 5.8K gps, consists of some 116 pounds of gold. An item costing some 21K gps will require a rather horrifying 420 pounds of gold to purchase.

How, exactly, are adventurers supposed to carry all this stuff off? Where does all this gold come from, anyway?

I recall, one time, some of us sat down and tried to compute the approximate dollar-equivalent worth of gold in the D&D universe, and came up with a figure that was anything but reasonable.

But a trillion dollar economy is huge by medieval standards. More than enough.

If your game is set in the New World, you'll have to account for the South American silver mines. They produced much more silver than gold, and really changed the European economy. There should be a rich Andean country.

Historically most places wouldn't change the number base on the currency, they would mint smaller coins. This happened many times. One pound sterling used to actually weigh one pound! So if one kingdom is minting smaller coins, the relative value between the coins will stay the same within that kingdom, but other kingdoms will rightly devalue those coins. Some minting styles are also inferior, which means some types of coins are easier to shave. Shaved coins don't have as much metal as they claim, and are less valuable. Once word gets around that one kingdom's coins are always light, those coins will be less trusted, and therefore less valuable.

Also, those hoards Kid Charlemagne mentioned would get emptied all at once; kings go to war, found new churches, build new castles, etc. So all of a sudden coins flood your economy.

PS

Here is one of the links I was talking about earlier.

Here is another link, talking in more detail about the amounts of silver in use -for example the fact that at least 18 tons of silver was used to buy off the Vikings after 845, from France alone.

Historically, precious metals were important as investment and industrial commodities. Gold and silver are two extremely valuable metal. However, for the third time in the last little while, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken action against precious metal investors. American Precious Metals, LLC is the latest company to be shut down in this review of precious metal investments. Companies have been guaranteeing fraudulent investments in gold, silver and other precious metals.
I read this here: CFTC taking action against precious metal investment businesses

platinum is only found in the new world.

Click to expand...

Actually, platinum (actual platinum, not just the other metals in the family) is also found in India, South Africa, and Russia.