The rules do not address this explicitly, but I think they make it very clear regardless:
"While it’s often enough to simply tell your players they’ve
found 5,000 gp in gems and 10,000 gp in jewelry"
Jewelry, gems, and art seems to be alternate forms of currency. You certainly sell the 5,000gp in gems for 5,000 gp. It is only for equipment and magical items that there is the reduced price.
In fact, the rule book does not discuss buying jewelry at all, and I guess it would be up to your GM on whether or not you could buy it at the same price you sell it (although I think it would make a lot of sense if you could).
The 3.5 PHB expanded on trade goods quite nicely. The following is added to the "Selling Treasure" section (though the PHB called it "Loot"):
Wheat, flour, cloth, gems, jewelry, art objects, and valuable metals are trade goods, and merchants often trade in them directly without using currency ...
I think most people use that rule, even though it's not explicit in Pathfinder.
While it does not explicitly calls out gems as trade goods, it mentions this sentence in the CRB, under "Selling Treasure"
"Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
I certainly would expect gems to fall under that category. It calls out iron, silver, gold and platinum for example as trade goods in the table (which seems to be missing from the PFSRD, but its in the CRB).
Yes, Gems are trade goods. Mind you using that 100000gps gem in the small village might be a problem.
It's funny, many many years ago when the peso wasn't worth much, I was in a very small Mexican Fishing village. All I had was a US $20 bill. The merchant had to send a kid around town to get change for me, and I had a wad of bills and a double handful of change. I think that kid got about a weeks pay as a tip from me, partially as he deserved it, partially as i didn't want to carry around the IRL equiv of 1000 coppers with me.
Don't worry- altho they thought we were rich Gringos for a bit, once they found out we'd give them our entire catch less one fish, and there was a guy in our group that could & did fix the villages diesel generators, we became the town heros. And of course, we left all that change, and more, behind.
But this is a example of how adventurers could change the economy of a village.
actually only in real life does the rarity of metal lead to a cost of a sword.
As the setting is not specified in the Core rules, the cost of a sword would dictate the rarity of metal.
But yes, prices are more for balance than for real life logic.
Considering that the longbow has historicly been an expensive item, and how the woods for bowmaking were at times more valuable than metal; it seems precedented. You can't just use any tree, and the good ones are rare and could take decades to grow.
Bringing this back to the original topic, and to add to deuxhero - Gems make far more sense as a rational currency than do gold pieces. One, there probably isn't really that much gold floating around in the world, and two, gems have a huge portability factor that gold doesn't.A small diamond, is more easily stored and carried than the equivalent 500 quarter-sized (for those familiar with U.S. currency) gold pieces.
I wouldn't be so sure. Gold, silver, copper coins etc were widely used as currency in medivial europe.
Sure it's rare that you can't build every house out of it, but it's not that super rare like some other things. Second you think gems are that much more common? :)Coins have one tremendous advantage over gems: They have equal value, or at least an easily determinable value.
You take a certain amoung of gold, melt it into a coin and stamp the lord's sigil on it, to proof that it's this ammount of gold.
If you were unsure about a gold coins weight, you could just weight it to check. Either because you suspected forgery or it was a goldcoin from a country you're not familiar with. But mostly it was "ok give me 2 of those coins and that's it"
Gems on the other hand... You need to examine each and every one of them to determine their worth. And of course you have to be an expert to do that. Far far far more hassle to use as everyday payment.
Of course a small gem is more easily carried than say 500 gp. But you'll not be able to pay with the gem everywhere since not everyone has the expertise to determine the value of it.
Or simply that not everyone has 499 gp 9 sp 8 cp lying around to return to you for that beer you just wanted to buy with it. Or a gem with exactly that value.
So what you'd probably do is find a rich merchant, or a bank or something, trade in that gem for coins, and then go buy that beer.
So no, there's a very good reason coins are (and have been) the dominant currency and not gems.
No, you need "an onyx of at least 25 gp per hit die".
That means for a 2 HD creature I need an onyx worth 50gp, but for a 10 HD creature its an Onyx of 250 gp. You can also use an onyx worth 60 gp or 400 for those two if you don't have a smaller one.
Which then means not all Onyxes are the same value. Which means to figure out how much that one placed infront of you is worth you have to examine it and know what you do.
Of course individual gems do have a value. And since you pay gp for it to buy them you know that value. Yes of course you can now say that maybe you got cheated and that "50 gp onyx" is really only worth 45 gp and so doesn't work for a 2 HD creature. But I figure since it was worth 50 gp for you, it works for the spell. It's magic there not science, so have to cut it some slack :)
Or you could say a spellcaster might actually know what they're doing with those gems they use. So they can and will check their worth before buying them, but that does not mean Joe Innkeeper can or wants to.
Appraise is a wizard class skill.
Considering that the longbow has historicly been an expensive item, and how the woods for bowmaking were at times more valuable than metal; it seems precedented. You can't just use any tree, and the good ones are rare and could take decades to grow.
While you may be right about English Yew, my research has led me to believe that longbows were a household object, and that any peasant could make a working bow in just a few days time out of necessity. Hardly what I would call expensive.
The way I work gems, jewelry, artwork, and other intrinsically-valuable items is the following:
Prices are given in terms of sale or trade value. So, if you find a "500gp necklace" you can sell/trade it for 500gp.
If you want to buy intrinsically-valuable objects from a craftsman or merchant, there is a10% surcharge. So, that 500gp necklace costs 550 to buy from the town jeweler. You write it on your character sheet as "500gp necklace."
Equipment and magic items are bought at book value and sold/traded at 50% value. If the PCs have a lot of time on their hands, they can attempt to find a direct buyer. This takes time, but if successful items can be sold between 75% and 110% of book value, depending on some opposed skill checks.
I wrote a post describing my system, and I'll link it here when I find it.
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I would love to see realistic appraise on gems (also why I wouldn't say gems are always good as trade goods).... If you get a Black Opal in Australia, and bring it to the states, it's value skyrockets (like I've seen one example that someone paid US$250 for a black opal ring, that when they got to the states it appraised at over US$1500 (insurance appraisal) from multiple jewlers.
What's so misleading about that quote from the CRB that I posted in the 4th post up there?
"Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
Basicly weapons, armor and magic items get sold for 50%, and pretty much everything else at 100%.
What's so misleading about that quote from the CRB that I posted in the 4th post up there?
"Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
Exactly. The game is designed around a GM who's there to make common-sense decisions about what's appropriate for the game. It's up to the GM to make a situational decision about what constitutes "almost as if it were cash" in the time and place of the transaction.
I mean, a barrel of pickled fish isn't going to sell for full value if you're at a prosperous fishing village where they have all the fresh fish they want. Gems and jewelry won't sell at full value in a gold mining town with a thriving jewelry export market. You won't be selling fur coats at full price in the tropics. And you can probably sell sacks of grain at greatly inflated prices in an area suffering a poor harvest.
This isn't a computer game, and the rules aren't programming code.
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What's so misleading about that quote from the CRB that I posted in the 4th post up there?
"Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
Basicly weapons, armor and magic items get sold for 50%, and pretty much everything else at 100%.
The problem is that you are taking the first sentence, which is part of the RAW, and then treating it as though the second sentence - your opinion as to what are trade goods, and which are not - is the only possible meaning.
There's absolutely nothing in that quote from the CRB that would invalidate the position that the only valid "trade goods" would be trade bars, gold ingots, etc. (and maybe not even those; AFAIK they aren't mentioned anywhere in RAW, but just show up as Game Mastery accessories).
The rule says how trade goods are to be treated; it doesn't say what items count as trade goods. While I've yet to encounter a GM who would not allow gems to be treated that way, such GMs obviously do exist (as can be seen from earlier posts to this thread).
Then we get onto the far more controversial category of jewelry. Some GMs allow these as trade goods. Others do not, but allow jewelry to be sold for anywhere from 50% to 90% of the listed value.
It would be nice if there were a few examples as to what are (and what are not) trade goods.
Then we get onto the far more controversial category of jewelry. Some GMs allow these as trade goods. Others do not, but allow jewelry to be sold for anywhere from 50% to 90% of the listed value.
Defer to your GM. As long as the GM's interpretation is being followed consistently, I fail to see a problem.