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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5525451" data-attributes="member: 8461">It's worth noting that part of Smaug's incredible wealth is that his gold and silver coins are measured differently than the gold coins (and, by extension, the silver coins) in D&D...which also affects the overall value of the Arkenstone, to boot.Smaug's gold coins are each one troy ounce of gold, and his silver coins are each one troy ounce of silver; 480 grains per coin.A D&D 3.5 gold coin is - if we assume that they're weighed in troy - 115.2 grains; a bit less than one-fourth of a troy ounce of gold. If we assume they're weighed in avoirdupois then that ratio rises to 140 grains; slightly less than one-third of an avoirdupois ounce of gold.Even wackier is the D&D 3.5 silver coin. This coin is both one-fiftieth of a pound (again, either troy of avoirdupois, depending on how you read the rulebooks) and one-tenth the value of a gold piece of the same mass. Using the current USD value of silver, this is impossible - we'd have to assume that the economic value of silver in D&D 3.5 is exactly one-tenth that of gold, making it have a value of $147.5 USD per troy ounce, or just slightly under $0.31 USD per grain.Even taking that into account, however, I can't recalculate the value of Smaug's hoard based on D&D coinage since, in order to calculate the total volume of coins in the hoard, I'd have to know the dimensions of a gold and silver coin. I suppose I could try to calculate the dimensions of the coins based on their weight, since mass is conserved (presumably meaning the results would be the same either way since the radius and thickness would always remain proportional), but that's beyond me, presuming that it's even right. Likewise, I don't know if it's possibly to simply adjust the dimensions of Smaug's coins proportionally to the differences in the weight of his coins versus D&D 3.5's coins, but even presuming that would provide accurate values, that's also beyond me.Hence, without knowing the radius and thickness of D&D gold and silver coins, there's no way to adjust for the fact that Smaug's coins are worth more than a great red wyrm's. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /></blockquote>

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