Gold!!!!

[Super Squirrel]

I'm trying to calculate how much a chunk of gold, just big enough to fit in your hand, would be worth? I'm looking at a stone slightly bigger than a golf ball to give you an idea.

If you could help just figure out how much gold that size would weigh, that would be enough. Thanks.

[LordGhee]

Worth when?

[Super Squirrel]

I'm actually converting to coins in Valdorian Age.

[LordGhee]

well if it is a nugget then the purity is an issue.

best guess 1/ to 1/2 pound

[Super Squirrel]

Gives me something to start with. Thanks.

And for all future people stabbing at this question, assume the nugget is pure.

[Markdoc]

Hmm. Volume of a sphere (4/3) [pi] r^{3}

radius of a golf ball about 2 cm

Volume of a golf ball about 31 cubic cm

Gold weighs about 19.3 grams per cubic cm if I recall correctly, so you're looking at about about 589 grams or a little over a pound.


cheers, Mark

[Super Squirrel]

Awesome. I'll make some random rolls to modify the grams slightly. Thanks. Congrats on 1000 posts.

And:
You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later.

[Markdoc]

1000 posts? Shucks, I didn't even notice.

Anyway - post counts, rep - a jedi cares not for these things. :D

cheers, Mark

[Super Squirrel]

589 grams = 20.7 ounces.
20.7 ounces of gold = 8,280 silver coins.

[Cancer]

589 grams = 20.7 ounces.
20.7 ounces of gold = 8,280 silver coins.

Look out. Your conversion there assumed avoidupois ounces, which is not historically correct for precious metals.

As a warning: beware of references to "ounces" when working with reference material dealing with gold and other precious metals. Typically such references implicitly use Troy measures (which is historically correct), not avoidupois. A Troy ounce is roughly 10% smaller than an avoidupois ounce, but a Troy pound is not 10% smaller than an avoidupois pound, because a Troy pound has fewer Troy ounces (12) than is true for the avoidupois pound/ounce. Most historical data on coin and jewelry weights, production of precious metals by mines, etc., will use Troy units, and often fail to make this point clear.

The differences will be at the 10% level, which probably isn't important to what you're doing, but it would be if you were running a business or a government. :D

As much as you possibly can, work in metric units to avoid this kind of confusion.

We gamers don't use this sort of thing anywhere near often enough, but confusion of units was historically common. Before most of Europe adopted the metric system, distance expression was just about hopeless. Everyone used their own mile, and what constituted a mile varied considerably. My memory is that the English statute mile was about the shortest, while a Swedish mile was about the longest, and those were different by more than a factor of 3.

[Trencher]

Also it depends on how much gold there is in the world.

I read somewhere that the amount of gold in the world fill the same square space a cube from the each corner of the efiel tower legs up to the same height as the top of the structure would fill.
Off course in the Valdorian age not all of it is dug up.

[Cancer]

Going to usmint.gov, the specs on currently-issued US coins:

Lincoln cent: 2.5 g
Jefferson nickel: 5.0 g
Roosevelt dime: 2.268 g
Washington quarter: 5.670 g
Kennedy half dollar: 11.340 g
Anthony and Sacagawea dollars: 8.1 g

the g here stands for grams, not grains.

US coins are not precious metal, of course. Everything higher-denomination than a nickel is mostly copper. Silver has a density 17% higher than copper, and gold is 2.15 times as dense as copper, so coins made of those metals that are the same size as US coins will be heavier by roughly those amounts.

You can find specs for current British coinage in the Wikipedia.

This neglects the effects of alloying, and the alloying metals are almost always lighter than the precious metal. Both silver and gold are too soft to make good circulating coins, so other metals (usually copper) were added to "toughen up" the metal. US silver coins of 1964 and earlier were .900 fine, that is, 90.0% silver. I haven't been able to find a number for the carat of historical gold coins.

Historically, princes were free to alter the carat of their coinage (that is, change the proportion of precious metal in their coins), and this was abused many times in history (in particular in France; by contrast England was very good about avoiding debasement of their coinage, keeping sterling at 92.5% silver from the 12th Century until 1920) when the prince borrowed at one value, then debased his currency (sometimes drastically) and paid off in coin of the lower precious-metal content.

Also important to historical commerce was the "bimetallic ratio", the relative worth of silver and gold. This ratio varied over time and from place to place, and large profits could be made by transporting and trading precious metal ... assuming you could transport it without getting robbed.

[Super Squirrel]

So what is the gram to ounce convergence for pure gold than?

[Cancer]

One Troy ounce of anything is 480 grains.
One avoidupois ounce of anything is 437.5 grains.
(Grains are the same in both Troy and avoidupois; it is the only (?) unit for which that is true. Troy ounces and avoidupois ounces have the same name, but are different weights.)

One grain is 0.0648 grams.

In most historical records, weights of gold and silver were given in Troy units.

Game source material, I don't know. You'll have to look. If a game source book uses ounces without specifying, I'd bet that they're using avoidupois in a sloppy way, either without being aware of the difference, or deciding they didn't care.

[Super Squirrel]

589 grams of gold.
9089 grains.
19 Troy ounces.
7600 silver coins.

[Markdoc]

either way, that's a lot of money :eek:

cheers, Mark

[Super Squirrel]

That's the point.

I wanted to know how far it would go. Does anyone know what a good coin charge per kilometer would be?

[bblackmoor]

Does anyone know what a good coin charge per kilometer would be?

I don't understand the question.

Also, I don't know if this is relevant to your situation or not, but maybe it will at least be interesting (if not, well, no harm done): http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=428234&postcount=27. I referred to avoirdupois pounds in that post, by the way. If I were writing it today I would use grams and kilograms.

[Cancer]

That's the point.

I wanted to know how far it would go. Does anyone know what a good coin charge per kilometer would be?

My guess is that rather than a per-kilometer fee, it's more of a transaction fee at the point where you try converting what you have into something else.

You take your gold to the local mint (or if you're in a place without a mint, or if the amount is smaller than the mint wants to deal with, you find a money-changer) and trade your raw metal or foreign coin for local coin. Money-changers were notoriously sharp characters, with different sets of weights for their scales depending on whom they were working with, taking advantage of anyone's inability to do math, and having outstanding local knowledge about what prince's coins were reliable in carat and what prince's money was crap. And since they had lots of money, they could buy protection anywhere, even in a temple. :rolleyes:

[Super Squirrel]

I, um, was really tired when I asked my last question as it is now obvious.

What I wanted to know, is how much does it cost per kilometer to pay for sea passage? I'm looking for a good rate to use and was hoping someone would be able to chime in with a decent number.

[Curufea]

I recommend looking at various Harn pages - they've got lots of great everyday resources.

Hmm - only found a "via land" article so far-
http://www.columbiagames.com/HarnPage/LifeonHarn/silverway.html

[Markdoc]

I, um, was really tired when I asked my last question as it is now obvious.

What I wanted to know, is how much does it cost per kilometer to pay for sea passage? I'm looking for a good rate to use and was hoping someone would be able to chime in with a decent number.

"per kilometre" rates are not really realistic - even today you don't pay based on distance.

The factors to take into account are.

How hard it is to get there. Passage downstream on a large river? Cheap. Passage upsteam? More expensive. Passage across the Desert of Wailing Souls? Really, really expensive or simply not for sale.

How frequently people make the trip. If there are lots of boats or wagons going somewhere prices will be cheaper than if it's one fleet every 5 years.

How much hassle it is to accomodate someone. A ship that is carrying grain to X, will be full up and probably won't want passengers unless they pay really well. On the way home, however, unless they are also buying bulk cargo they'll have more space and so will be *looking* for passengers.

Only last of all will distance figure - and it's the time taken to get there, not the actual mileage, that really counts. And in pre-industial times that time was really, really variable. I've got a nifty book called "Travel in the Ancient world" which focuses on the Roman era which makes this point. One man's nephew went to Alexandria from Italy by sea and made the trip in about a week (!) - unfortunately all he says is they made very good time. The same trip took him 3 months on the way back. He probably paid more for the home trip since the ships bound out of Egypt would have been mostly full, but still....

Add to this, the fact that fixed prices for travel did not exist back then - you got what you could negotiate - and two people on the same ship could share a cabin and still pay wildly different prices. Sleeping on the deck would be cheaper, so that's a third price. Same if you bring your own food or expect the captain to cough up.

So it's hard to give any fixed numbers - it's totally variable. My suggestion is to work out if the trip is hard/unusual or easy and then set payment by what in your game is "expensive" or "cheap".

cheers, Mark

[Cancer]

I'm with Markdoc (whom I repped) on this one. Sea travel is a HUGE variable. Historically on Earth, it depends upon (physically) upon start/end points and season and (socially) on stuff like pirates, wars, customs and other government policy with regard to trade, and so on. In the Mediterranean, as he says, the trip from Rome to Alexandria could take a few days under optimal conditions. And it is quite likely that the same traveller could complete his business in Alexandria and find literally no ship, no captain, willing to attempt the return trip ... for five months.

Now, I am much more interested in pre-1700 maritime history and technology than anyone I've ever gamed with, and I am the kind of ******* who thinks that getting sea travel right is a hugely important step of game-world creation, since it dominates international commerce, which drives the socioeconomics which drives the wars between large states ... but I am being an ******* here and I know it. :o

[LordGhee]

Okay Cancer so give us a table with a skill vs skill roll to modified the cost, say an Anctient tech, middle ages, the ren. . . . spell aahah.

There is rep in it for you. :wink:

challange

[LordGhee]

Cancer have you read rogers warfare under oars.

now the sea cow a 400 ton merchant (national Geograpic spell ah) that sank in the BCE. crew 5 and captain. now a man could get a drachma (silver piece) a day with the Athenian navay (6 month of work) as a rower.

so on the cow the crew would make 5 silver a day the cow would cost about (from memory I ran a Greek game long ago) 6,000 silver and last 6 years so if you use it 10 months thats a 100 silver cost. so that 200 silver a month plus as a bottom line. a passenger is profit over cargo so I would bill 2 silver a day for passage (no pay but work could go, some work and some pay good )

dirve you nuts

[Super Squirrel]

I've decided for simplicity to use the following:

1 SP / Day of River Travel
2 SP / Day of Sea Travel
100 SP Chartering Fee / Person*

*A chartering fee is imposed any time a vessel is chartered to go to a location outside of their normal trading course.

[Basil]

Hmm. Volume of a sphere (4/3) [pi] r^{3}

radius of a golf ball about 2 cm

Volume of a golf ball about 31 cubic cm

Gold weighs about 19.3 grams per cubic cm if I recall correctly, so you're looking at about about 589 grams or a little over a pound.


cheers, Mark
More exactly: A regulation golf ball has a diameter of 1.68", thus a radius of 2.1336 cm. Gold's sg is 19.32. So, mass is 786 g.; 27.73 oz. avdp. if you insist on staying in the Dark Ages ;). (25.27 oz. troy; however, judging by everything I've read from HeroGames, they don't understand, or don't care about, the difference between oz. avdp. and oz. troy, and are using oz. avdp. throughout).

Valdorian Age, page 19, says "One ounce of gold is worth roughly 400... coins", so your golden golfball is worth circa 11,090 coins. IF, of course, it is pure and you can get its full worth from a moneychanger. ;)


BTW, those 0.5 oz. avdp. coins? If they are 10% copper and 90% silver, with a total, final mass of 0.5 oz. avdp, and are one-twentyth as thick as they are broad, will have a diameter of 4.12 cm. That is somewhat larger than the old Eisenhower "silver" dollar! :eek:

Another BTW: Once you've gotten sorted out on avoirdupois vs. troy weights, don't forget the THIRD system, apothecaries' weights. Which you should not confuse with apothecaries' measure; that's a series of units of capacity.

And people wonder why I stick with the metric system.

[Basil]

Historically, princes were free to alter the carat of their coinage (that is, change the proportion of precious metal in their coins), and this was abused many times in history (in particular in France; by contrast England was very good about avoiding debasement of their coinage, keeping sterling at 92.5% silver from the 12th Century until 1920) when the prince borrowed at one value, then debased his currency (sometimes drastically) and paid off in coin of the lower precious-metal content.

What many people don't realize is that devaluing the currency hit the intrinsic value two ways. You see, the same dies (blank-cutting and impressing) were used, so the devalued coins had the same volume as the old coins. Since the alloying metal had a lower density, the coins landed up massing less. Thus, the coins were a lower fraction, of a lesser mass, of silver/gold.

No wonder people hated it when coins were devalued.

[Cancer]

Cancer have you read rogers warfare under oars.

now the sea cow a 400 ton merchant (national Geograpic spell ah) that sank in the BCE. crew 5 and captain. now a man could get a drachma (silver piece) a day with the Athenian navay (6 month of work) as a rower.

so on the cow the crew would make 5 silver a day the cow would cost about (from memory I ran a Greek game long ago) 6,000 silver and last 6 years so if you use it 10 months thats a 100 silver cost. so that 200 silver a month plus as a bottom line. a passenger is profit over cargo so I would bill 2 silver a day for passage (no pay but work could go, some work and some pay good)

I don't think I've read that book by Rogers (I've read one or two others of his). The one I've read is by Casson, and I went browsing through it yesterday looking for useful tidbits. That book wasn't concerned with the economics of maritime commerce, rather the technical aspects of ships and sailing. I'll have to find that book you mention.

The "speed record" for an extended voyage by galley in the Mediterranean in ancent times is 9 knots. That was a case for a fast ship and where the wind was remarkably steady and usefully strong and from dead astern for the whole trip. This was from Italy to Alexandria (in two days), which is "downhill" in the sense that the prevaling winds in the Mediterranean blow out of the northwest. More typical speeds for that trip, for fleets of several ships (and you usually sailed in fleets for protection against pirates), were more like 4 to 6 knots.

The trip going the other way always is a lot slower. Against a wind the ships had to tack, and single-masted ships like galleys don't do that very well. The average for fleets for that seems to be in the range of less than 2 to about 2.5 knots.

These averages are simply great-circle distance divided by duration of voyage. The ships' instantaneous speed is somewhat higher than that, but going against the wind you have to do a lot of zig-zags.