Hazards of Hookers and Problems with Prostitutes

[Rel]

Uhh.... coins are a fraction of an inch thin. What am I missing?

The weight of gold is such that if you want 50 of them (with a 1 inch diameter) to weigh only a pound then those bad boys gotta be THIN.

 

[Desdichado]

How thin? I'm not very familiar with the density of gold, and I certainly don't have any gold coins. But are we talking thinner than, say a quarter?

 

[Gomez]

In a Call of Cthulhu game that I ran, I had a PC go to a local speakeasy/brothel in 1920's San Francisco and he told me that he wanted the services of one of the working girls for a night. Well, she was a thin Polynesian beauty with large eyes and webbed feet! Since he didn't know the mythos very well and his character had a foot fetish it was all good to him. I cannot wait to run the game again 9 months later when he has a bundle of fishy joy put on his doorstep!

 

[jrients]

However, it seems that the value of a "working girl" in the Medieval period was significantly less than in the modern day, and I'm not sure there's anything in historical analogue to compare to "call girls" of modern times. A "girl" was a "girl" was a "girl", until the past 50 years or so, to my knowledge.

I think if you look in the medieval history of the worlds oldest profession you will find a considerable spectrum of prices and services in places other than Europe.

 

[The Shaman]

It's within an order of magnitude of being about right, which is really all you can ask for when you are creating a table to generate costs of prostitutes.

I love this game!

 

[Henry]

Actually, based on the weight and sizes listed in the PHB, it's not even close. They're more like tin with a bit of gold paint dabbed on them.

They have a real-size illo of a gp, that's an inch across, and they are supposedly 50/lb. In pure gold, they'd have to be a fraction of an inch thin.

I dunno - assuming pure gold's specific gravity is 19.32 g/cm^3, and a quarter's volume is about .57 cm^3 (1.1 cm radius, .15cm height), then a coin the size of a U.S. quarter weighing pure gold would weigh a little over 11 grams. That gets you a one pound stack of 41 coins. That's pretty close. If it's only 18K or even 14K gold, then that can get even BELOW the gram weights for 50 coins to a pound.

Secondly, take a coin 1 inch in diameter (1.27cm radius), and the height of a quarter, and make it pure gold, and you get 14.6 grams per coin, which makes a little over 30 coins per pound, still not that far off if you're talking gold alloy.

 

[the Jester]

This thread just gets more fascinating as the subject wanders into the weight of a gold coin. Seriously.


I will continue to follow it avidly, and occasionally to throw a post in to encourage everyone, but I don't have anything useful to add just yet.

 

[Rel]

How thin? I'm not very familiar with the density of gold, and I certainly don't have any gold coins. But are we talking thinner than, say a quarter?

Considerably.

A US quarter of current mint is about 92% Copper (the rest is mostly Nickel). Gold weighs about 2.16 times more than Copper so to achieve equal weight then a coin the same size as a quarter would have to be a bit less than half as thick. If you're talking about 1 inch Gold coins they're going to have to be quite thin to fit 50 in a pound.

Another way of looking at it is that it takes 1.4327 cubic inches of Gold to make a pound. A cylinder of gold that weighs 1 pound and has a diameter of 1 inch is 1.8242 inches high. If we want to get 50 coins out of that then they need to be 0.0365 inches thick. A quarter is 0.0689 inches thick.

Given how malleable gold is, I suspect they would have a hard time holding their shape under normal use (like having 100 of them all thrown into a chest).

EDIT: I'm pleased to see that even though Henry beat me to the punch, we came at the problem from slightly different angles. It makes all that math a bit less of a waste of time.

 

[megamania]

In a Call of Cthulhu game that I ran, I had a PC go to a local speakeasy/brothel in 1920's San Francisco and he told me that he wanted the services of one of the working girls for a night. Well, she was a thin Polynesian beauty with large eyes and webbed feet! Since he didn't know the mythos very well and his character had a foot fetish it was all good to him. I cannot wait to run the game again 9 months later when he has a bundle of fishy joy put on his doorstep!

that is so wrong

 

[megamania]

I dunno - assuming pure gold's specific gravity is 19.32 g/cm^3, and a quarter's volume is about .57 cm^3 (1.1 cm radius, .15cm height), then a coin the size of a U.S. quarter weighing pure gold would weigh a little over 11 grams. That gets you a one pound stack of 41 coins. That's pretty close. If it's only 18K or even 14K gold, then that can get even BELOW the gram weights for 50 coins to a pound.

Secondly, take a coin 1 inch in diameter (1.27cm radius), and the height of a quarter, and make it pure gold, and you get 14.6 grams per coin, which makes a little over 30 coins per pound, still not that far off if you're talking gold alloy.

This is a game ....right? It's true- today's math drive kids to drink.