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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3catcircus" data-source="post: 4012688" data-attributes="member: 16077">I think you are missing the point.  In a silver standard (heck even in a gold standard), there *aren't* any gold coins that the average person will ever hold in their hand, with most gold coins being relegated to some king's vaults - and then more than likely as gold ingots instead of coins - as a reserve for all the money actually circulating - thus the ability to issue, say, 10,000 silver coins (at the standard 50 coins/lb in D&D), while only needing 20 pounds of gold to back it.The light warhorse in the PHB costs 150 gp.  That means you'll have to carry 1500 sp worth of coins (30 pounds of coins).  It should be interesting to note that the pre-decimal British £sd system issued primarily pence as the main coinage, with more valuable shillings also circulated.  There were no pound coins (gold or silver) until the issue of the gold sovereign in 1489.  Given that the sovereign represented 240 pence worth of silver (there was no silver pound coin at the time) and the ratio was roughly 12/1 (on average), that means that gold is 12 times as valuable as silver.  Similarly, in D&D, gold is 10x as valuable as silver, so there really shouldn't be very many gold coins at all.  What the gp in D&D represents (same as it does real-world), in conjunction with the sp, is fungibility.  Nothing more.In order for the silver standard to work in D&D, you have to eliminate gold coins from circulation while keeping all book prices in gold (i.e. that 150 gp warhorse now costs 1500 sp.)  Note that the "old" sp is still silver, but just a different size/weight coin than the silver gp coin.  What this means from a practicality standpoint is that, other than starting equipment/money, all treasure is gonna be silver or copper coins, which means the PC's buying power goes down.  Which is fine when you consider that one of the probably goals of everyone here (me included) who wants a silver standard is to make buying/selling magic items much more difficult.The really interesting thing that I don't think has ever been covered is in regards to the 50 coins/pound standard in D&D - the density of gold is nearly twice that of silver, and copper is less than twice as dense as gold.  So - that gp (at 50 coins/pound) weighs around 9 grams, which makes the volume of that coin roughly roughly .5 cm^3.  The size of the coin in the PHB is roughly 1.17 inches (2.9718 cm) across, which means that, for the given volume of .5 cm^3, the coin would have to be .0067 cm in thickness (roughly 1/37 of an inch thick).  At those thicknesses, your gold coins are gonna soon get melded together while you carry them and handle them.Going back to the 1st edition 10 gp coins/pound, each coin weighs roughly 45 grams, and for the given 2.9718 cm diameter in the 3.5 PHB, the coins become a respectable roughly 1/8 inch thick - much more believable.  More importantly, this is nearly identical to the modern British one-pound sterling coin (granted it is mostly Cu-Zn, but is still roughly the same size and weight as a real gold guinea coin).Basically - for the fungibility (1 gp = 10 sp), the amount of coins you can carry per pound of weight is much greater for silver due to the difference in density between silver and gold and the gold/silver ratio.  That is - 10 sp coins equal 1 gp coin, but if the coins are all the same size per the 3e PHB, then you should be able to either carry 50 gp at one pound, or 1000 sp at one pound.</blockquote>

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