Is there so much gold on Golarion that they can just make into a currency? Same for Platinum, Sliver, and Copper.
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Yeah, gold coins are made of gold. It was also the case in our own world (even if I feel there were less of them than in Golarion).
wouldn't they need to be some gold alloy or plating because of how soft gold is? Not being contrarian, just voicing the impression I'm under, eager to be corrected.
That's why in the old days people were biting gold coins: To determine if they are fully made of gold or if this is just gold plating.
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I mean, I don't know how much gold there is on Earth, but it does indeed stretch the limits of believability when in higher levels you come upon hoards of 1000+ gold coins.
For OP: a very brief history lesson (all from high school economics, so I might be grossly wrong and oversimplifying): back in the day, coins were worth the amount of money they were because the amount of precious metal in the coin was exactly worth the value of the coin. Say you go to a goldsmith and buy 1 bar of gold. You can melt those down into exactly the amount of gold coins you used to buy that bar of gold.
As SuperBidi said, biting the coin was proof that the coin was real: if it bends, it's gold. It it doesn't bend/dent, it's some other metal with a gold paint.
Also the reason that coins nowadays have those grooves/ridges on the side was because people used to shave tiny little slivers off their coins. Each little sliver wasn't worth much, but it wouldn't be missed, and if you do it long enough, you can melt them down into new coins. The intentations on the side of coins is to prove these haven't been shaved down.
Banks started to come up where you could store your money, Basically, everyone at the bank had a bucket where people could store their money. You drop off your money where it's safe, it goes into your personal bucket, and later, you could ask for it again and someone grabs that amount of money from your bucket and gives it to you.
Later, "paper money" was introduced as a letter of credit. It wasn't worth the hassle of lugging around piles of coins. You store all your coins at the bank, and you got a note from the bank that you can then trade in again to get that amount of gold from any other bank. And then, you could trade your letter of credit to someone else so that if they go to the bank, they got that amount of gold. Basically, the amount of paper money was exactly equal to the actual amount of gold in circulation.
And rather than a clerk filing the bank note and withdrawing money from bucket A and putting it into bucket B, we just skip the whole middle process: banks don't divide their coins into separate accounts anymore, but keep it in one giant pile. Saves a whole lot of hassle and space, as you don't need like a million buckets anymore, with the risk of money accidentally going in the wrong bucket, and so on.
Even later, we now trust that the banks are good for the money they say they have. The banks still hold gold, I believe, but the amount of paper money in circulation would outweigh the value of gold in storage. But if we would all withdraw our savings, banks wouldn't be able to give everyone their money, as the value is only theoretical. Money has value because we all agree that the green bill with the number on it is worth money. That's why our coins are made of mundane and cheap metals: they don't represent the value of their metal anymore.
And to circle back to OP: the Middle Ages, roughly where Golarion is technology- and economy-wise, hasn't invented the bank notes yet (or maybe the early stages). Wealth isn't theoretical yet, so each coin is actually worth the value of their metal. The only abstraction is probably that 1 gold coin isn't worth 10 silver coins, but that's just to keep math easy and not worry about conversion rates.
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I mean, I don't know how much gold there is on Earth, but it does indeed stretch the limits of believability when in higher levels you come upon hoards of 1000+ gold coins.
Gold coins weighs a few grams (6 for the "Napoleon", a classic French gold coin) when gold ingots can weigh a few kilograms (12.4 for the classic "Good Delivery"). So a couple thousands gold coins is just a gold ingot.
The 90 000 gold coins Staff of the Magi is still rather expensive, but level 20 adventurers are such a rarity I don't think they break the gold economy.
Also, I expect high level adventurers to have smaller currencies, like gems.
wouldn't they need to be some gold alloy or plating because of how soft gold is? Not being contrarian, just voicing the impression I'm under, eager to be corrected.That's why in the old days people were biting gold coins: To determine if they are fully made of gold or if this is just gold plating.
It is why the edges of coins tend to be textured. Old tricks back in the day with silver/gold coins was shaving the edges down just a bit for the gold/silver.
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I don't think it stretches believability at all, since high level characters have access to the planes of earth and metal, where theoretically precious metals are infinite.
Then again, in the Travel Guide there were specific sections where it was mentioned that the church of Abadar takes a poor view of such shenanigans. ^^
Real world economics have no place neither in Pathfinder nor D&D nor any other high fantasy setting with shades of D&D, because if you think about it in realistic terms just for a few minutes, the entire thing implodes on itself spectacularly. Just use the prices given in the books and handwave stuff like fluctuating prices, depreciation of currency and so on.
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Quentin Coldwater's summary is a fair representation of how civilization went from a gold backed currency to a FIAT currency. It's basically backed by the government, but it's also kind of just imaginary.
It's necessary to use fiat currency because there simply isn't enough precious metals in the world to have circulating as currency, and also sets an arbitrary amount of "money" the world can have. Gold backed currency is very limiting to an economy.
Anyways, I strongly suggest you not worry about these kinds of issues for a fantasy game.
Yes, gold coins were made from gold (in the RPG and in real life). And that's why you would see traders with scales because different coins forged from different sources would have different weights. In real life people were concerned about the authenticity of the coins, whether they had been shaved or if they were pure. It was also a concern about the longevity of a coin, which is partially why in real life you started have plated coins (and also to extend how many coins you could have by using less precious metal per coin). However all of those are details that you can and should ignore unless you want to have some sort of coin fraud plot going on.
Don't try to inject too much realism into a RPG.
Also one of the reasons you can just walk into some ancient ruin and get "gp" that you can use is the gold value in the coin itself. Some ancient osirion coinage is no longer current tender in any city but would still be accepted because you can just melt it down and remint it.
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Bank notes and promissory notes absolutely existed in old Earth civilizations, and are literally some of the oldest writings we have found. Any time a society was stable enough that someone could count on a 3rd party (a government) to intervene in a "they owe me money!" dispute, that's all that was needed before on-paper value was traded for real goods.
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On the "too much gold" side of the equation, I don't necessarily disagree, though it's important to note that gold coin IRL has usually been a mixed alloy of varying purity, and I expect Golarion's to be the same.
The other relevant detail is that Golarion is a world of magic and alchemy. Not only do devils tempt mortals with cursed goose statues that eat hearts and provide golden eggs, but I'd guess there are dozens of Alchemists out there turning lead into gold w/ Philosopher's Stones.
Basically, on Earth if one wants more gold, the only way to do that is to find it and collect it, either out of the earth, or source the gold that someone else took out of the earth.
In Golarion, "I want gold" can mean literally creating and adding more gold to the supply. After a few millennia-old advanced civilization resets, I would expect there to be a significantly higher amount of gold in circulation.
Even issues like weight become fuzzy to world-building extrapolate when you've got Spacious Pouches that can keep the metal in a weightless pocket dimension.
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The other relevant detail is that Golarion is a world of magic and alchemy. Not only do devils tempt mortals with cursed goose statues that eat hearts and provide golden eggs, but I'd guess there are dozens of Alchemists out there turning lead into gold w/ Philosopher's Stones.
Also mining is different in fantasy worlds. It's much easier for various ancestries to mine much deeper than real world humans could along with creating even larger mines/dungeons/underground metropolises.
That ability opens up more access to precious metals than what we, bound by our current understanding of engineering and physics, have access to on Earth.
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This brings to mind a AD&D campaign I was in back in the late '70's/early '80's. Our Party had just killed a 'god', a booming voice from above said "To the victors goes the spoils". The sky opened up and an enormous mountain of treasure fell before us.
For the next several days, dragons came from all over and carried off huge amounts of treasure... and it didn't seem to make a dent. So, to avoid destroying the world's economy, we cast Hallucinatory Terrain on the whole thing, set up Guards and Wards, and continued the adventure.
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Ignoring the fact that golarion has access to the elemental planes, a common misconception about historical gold is the size of the coins - they are usually rather small
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Hacksilver is an interesting concept to know about, it's treating silver purely by weight, and cutting off an amount to conduct a trade.
Picture Viking traders with massive silver armbands, drawing one and cutting off some pieces with a handaxe.
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As a historical tidbit, back in the day governments would debase the coins they minted by adding in other metals so they could create more coins, so you often see phrases like "Emperor Blorbicus Maximus debased the coinage yet again to fund his many wars" in Roman histories. Apparently the Roman denarius went from being pure silver to about 2% silver in the end.
In that vein, maybe the treasure that adventurers find in the dungeons is valuable because it dates from a time before the government debased the coinage? OK, yeah, probably not the most compelling plot point...
There is something like 190000 tons of gold above ground in the real world. Presuming the amount is at all equivalent At fifty coins per pound, I think there’s enough?
Historically there were instances of huge hoards that could justify any found in fantasy. It's just that in an RPG world everything amplified, much like the last few decades have seen more (potential) world-altering events (APs) than the centuries before. So too the hoards become more numerous to serve the grand stories told, to fund the power levels of blossoming protagonists. It's an accepted conceit, realistic enough for verisimilitude and narrative purpose, but not beholden to any rigor that may detract from the fantasy. It's much like DC's Earth has as much or as little kryptonite as stories require, and the ramifications of high-tech get sidelined to accentuate the combats & characters.
So yeah, there's obviously enough X to serve purpose Y on Golarion because Y's purposes are necessary and exist/occur.
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Temples to Abadar meticulously maintain the divinely ordained prices of goods and services and ensure compliance.
My first thought too. Gods help personify the magic which does whatever the creators want the Creator(s) to substantiate. All tidy, and quite socially advanced too. Everybody of the same merit (with perhaps Assurance) earns the same income? And somewhat demonstrably? That's amazing social technology. It's easy to imagine Abadar adding or subtracting as much precious metal as required for balance (though how that interacts w/ wealth (in)equality would be a puzzle).
And look how a multitude of sapient creatures coexist AND the somewhat measurable granularity of intelligence (et al). Yet there's broad (albeit not universal) acceptance of all types. If Golarion had grown organically w/o such higher authorities and w/ such cataclysms & planar incursions as it's had, there'd be much more chaos and instability IMO. Of course maybe the gods mind Golarion's welfare more due to Rovagug than social engineering desires. Can't have economies (et al) falter when one needs to groom brigades of fantasy heroes to fight in some pending Armageddon.
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For fun, you should put a couple dozen Rai stones coins in a treasure pile.
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The true test of Golarian as a fantasy economy is that there is no inflation, and that the price of goods remains pretty darn consistent. You know there has to be magic involved for that to happen.
One assumes that there are some very serious wizards in a tower somewhere who will, from time to time bring in additional gold from the Elemental Plane of E̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ Metal, or deposit a significant amount of gold into the Elemental Plane of E̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ Metal, just to keep the value of things static.
They are anonymous, and do not like to attract attention to themselves, but they are essential.
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One assumes that there are some very serious wizards in a tower somewhere who will, from time to time bring in additional gold from the Elemental Plane of E̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ Metal, or deposit a significant amount of gold into the Elemental Plane of E̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ Metal, just to keep the value of things static.
They are anonymous, and do not like to attract attention to themselves, but they are essential.
Maybe there is a group of central bankers (or in the us, federal reserve) playing them as a campaign.
Oh no, inflation in Taldor, everybody roll initiative!
Here’s a thought … 20 to 1 is what I remember silver to gold coin in the real world being. I could be wrong there. However … in games, we see 10 to 1.
Maybe inflation is already understood.
Here’s a thought … 20 to 1 is what I remember silver to gold coin in the real world being. I could be wrong there. However … in games, we see 10 to 1.
Maybe inflation is already understood.
In old D&D, the ratios weren't so metric. Of course, Oerth & Mystara lacked Abadar who sized coins the proper way for easier accounting.
wouldn't they need to be some gold alloy or plating because of how soft gold is? Not being contrarian, just voicing the impression I'm under, eager to be corrected.
The term "pieces of eight" comes from people literally cutting coins into 8 pizza slices.
Is there so much gold on Golarion that they can just make into a currency? Same for Platinum, Sliver, and Copper.
You are looking at the amount of gold from a player character respective. The average person might never see a gold coin in their life.
And also in fantasy world you have creatures like Dwarves, millions of them, spending almost their entire life living underground, happily digging out gold.
I've heard that the 10:1 silver ratio is actually pretty historical. I can't remember if it was for Rome or if it was more closer to Middle Ages but it was definitely around the number we use at one point. I had a history prof tell that they had no way of knowing, but after the gold and silver mines of Europe mostly played out, it turned out there actually was about 10 times as much silver to gold on the continent.
Don't have sources tho', this just stuck with me as trivia from a university class
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You can get Murray Rothbard's classic What Has Government Done To Our Money? for free from the Mises Institute. This is a book that everyone should read.
The denarius was a Roman silver coin, a "silver penny". The British "Pound" was originally the "Pound Sterling" a paper certificate with the value of a pound of silver. The denarius originally weighed about 6.81 grams. It was debased over time, meaning that the weight of silver was reduced. Governments tend to debase their money, because they can.
Gold and silver are used for money because they are relatively rare and hard to come by and also durable (relatively speaking).
I mean, I don't know how much gold there is on Earth, but it does indeed stretch the limits of believability when in higher levels you come upon hoards of 1000+ gold coins.
There are, according to some sources, a bit more than 200,000 tonnes of gold "above ground" i.e., already been mined. There are 53,000 tonnes of gold reserves known to be still in the ground.
200,000 tonnes is 6.4301 billion one troy ounce coins -- if they're pure gold. Gold is usually alloyed with other metals so the coins will last longer.
"Money" is a medium of exchange. An ounce of gold is not worth N "dollars", it's worth what people are willing to exchange for it. Interesting datum: the current price, in gold, for a man's three piece tailored suit is about one troy ounce. 100 years ago, the price in gold for such a suit was roughly... one troy ounce. 200 years ago, same thing. Gold keeps its value, dollars don't. A 2024 US dollar is worth maybe $0.02 1913 dollars. Not coincidentally, 1913 is the year the US Federal Reserve System was founded.
Etymology of "dollar": from early Flemish or Low German daler, from German T(h)aler, short for Joachimsthaler, a coin from the silver mine of Joachimsthal (‘Joachim's valley’), now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic. The term was later applied to a coin used in the Spanish American colonies, which was also widely used in the British North American colonies at the time of the American War of Independence, hence adopted as the name of the US monetary unit in the late 18th century.
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Is there so much gold on Golarion that they can just make into a currency? Same for Platinum, Sliver, and Copper.You are looking at the amount of gold from a player character respective. The average person might never see a gold coin in their life.
And also in fantasy world you have creatures like Dwarves, millions of them, spending almost their entire life living underground, happily digging out gold.
Not to mention there's an entire plane that's essentially one big mine, and a second that's just made of all the metal you could ever want.
Golarion potentially has the opposite problem of Earth in terms of "pegging the value of a currency to Gold." Since the potential reserves on Golarion, given sufficient Magic, are effectively unlimited.
So the reason you would expect your Gold Coin to be valuable is less any sort of belief in the intrinsic value of Gold, and more because Taldor has told you that this is valuable and you believe that Taldor will exist longer than you are alive.
Like this is going to be a comparable problem on earth once we (and this is probably a century away) start mining the asteroid belt. Per current prices there are quintillions of dollars in precious materials out past Mars, but once we start hauling that stuff back to earth those precious metals will be significantly less precious (but no less useful for their practical applications.)
Golarion potentially has the opposite problem of Earth in terms of "pegging the value of a currency to Gold." Since the potential reserves on Golarion, given sufficient Magic, are effectively unlimited.
So the reason you would expect your Gold Coin to be valuable is less any sort of belief in the intrinsic value of Gold, and more because Taldor has told you that this is valuable and you believe that Taldor will exist longer than you are alive.
Like this is going to be a comparable problem on earth once we (and this is probably a century away) start mining the asteroid belt. Per current prices there are quintillions of dollars in precious materials out past Mars, but once we start hauling that stuff back to earth those precious metals will be significantly less precious (but no less useful for their practical applications.)
I mean thankfully were aren't use the gold standard anymore, so what it means in more practical terms is that "precious" metals will become less precious and thus less costly. Which will hurt some businesses, but won't destroy the world economy (probably, I'm not an economist) compared to suddenly getting an influx of gold if our currency were still based on it.
I mean thankfully were aren't use the gold standard anymore, so what it means in more practical terms is that "precious" metals will become less precious and thus less costly. Which will hurt some businesses, but won't destroy the world economy (probably, I'm not an economist) compared to suddenly getting an influx of gold if our currency were still based on it.
Clearly you're not an economist. As for going off the gold standard meaning the price of gold goes down, exactly the opposite of that has happened. You need to read [i]What Has Government Done To Our Money by Murray Rothbard. It wouldn't hurt to go on and read Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action by Robert P. Murphy, either. The first book is free at that link, the second is $21.95, or 0.262 grams of gold at current prices.
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I mean thankfully were aren't use the gold standard anymore, so what it means in more practical terms is that "precious" metals will become less precious and thus less costly. Which will hurt some businesses, but won't destroy the world economy (probably, I'm not an economist) compared to suddenly getting an influx of gold if our currency were still based on it.Clearly you're not an economist. As for going off the gold standard meaning the price of gold goes down, exactly the opposite of that has happened. You need to read [i]What Has Government Done To Our Money by Murray Rothbard. It wouldn't hurt to go on and read Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action by Robert P. Murphy, either. The first book is free at that link, the second is $21.95, or 0.262 grams of gold at current prices.
I don't think this is a helpful tangent to keep going on for the second time in this thread, Ed. I also suspect you're not going to get much support for Rothbard on these forums, given who he was - deeply misogynistic right wing ghouls with a love for KKK members aren't the most popular here, I suspect. I certainly can also say that I found What Has Government Done To Our Money to be a waste of perfectly good paper and ink, from an economic perspective.