How BIG are gold pieces? (includes pictures)

[waysoftheearth]

I can't find it in my LBBs right now, but page 9 of Holmes states that 300 gold pieces weigh 30 pounds, and page 102 of the AD&D PHB states that 10 gold pieces weigh one pound. Okay, that sounds kinda heavy, but how big are they?

I have been wondering this for years, so I finally got around to some digging. On wikipedia I learned that a like amount of copper or silver weighs roughly the same, being 8.9 and 10.5 times as dense as water respectively. The same amount of gold, however, is almost exactly twice as heavy as either, being 19.3 times as dense as water.

So assuming that copper, silver and gold coins all weigh 1/10th of a pound, gold pieces are very probably smaller and/or thinner than silver and copper pieces. That's all very well, but how BIG are they??

I live in Australia, where the coins are made of an alloy called Cupronickel, which is three parts copper to one part nickel, and turns out to be 8.9 times as dense as water. So these coins are of a comparable density to D&D copper and silver pieces. (I suspect many coins of the modern World are of a similar composition, but I haven't checked.)

So all I needed next was a Cupronickel coin that weighed 1/10th of a pound, and I'd have myself a near-authentic sized D&D coin.

In Australia we happen to have a giant-sized 50 cent piece. It is 32mm (1.3") across, 3mm (0.1") thick, and weighs 16 grams (0.6oz). But some quick calculations reveal that even these monstrous coins weigh only 1/28th of a pound each!

In other words, each D&D copper or silver piece is three times the size of a modern Australian 50 cent piece!! And therefore each D&D gold-piece is 1.5 times the size of a modern Australian 50 cent piece.

On the basis of this, I decided that for any given a sack-full of random D&D coins, each coin could (very approximately) be said to be twice the size of my (formerly "giant") 50 cent piece.

Armed with this information, I set about collecting a pile of 50 cent pieces. Six months later I finally have enough to simulate a decent little hoard of D&D coins. So, with common celotape I stuck a bunch of 50 cent pieces together in pairs -- each pair being a reasonable representation of a single D&D sized coin. As a result I now have a pile of "realistically sized" D&D-sized coins to clink together, and to lug about at my game sessions. I have linked to a few pictures below for your amusement.

It is interesting to note that;

• They are really, REALLY big!
  
• 10 coins is a comfortable handful.
  
• 20 coins is a full handful.
  

This picture shows a stack of 10 "simulated pieces" or "sp", (left pile) next to a US 1 cent piece and a US 5 cent piece (center pile), and a stack of 10 AU 5 cent pieces (right pile).



This picture shows the same US and AU coins overshadowed by 20"sp" in two stacks of 10.


This picture shows the same US and AU coins surrounded by 60"sp" in six stack of 10.


This picture shows what a handful a handful of 20"sp" really is.


So now you know!

;D


Edit: Added "sp" are "simulated pieces"

[chgowiz]

That's really cool!

One question.. you were talking in the text that you were simulating "gp" with 2 coins - and in the pictures you were referring to them as "sp"? Was that deliberate?

Have an exalt!

[robertsconley]

Nice work.

Here is a page that give a good idea what historical coin sizes were

www.museumsurplus.com/MedievalCoinsPAGE1.htm

In my own game I prefer to use 250 coins to the pound. I also use a silver based system with large value gold coins.

1 silver penny = 1 D&D sp = 250 to 1lb
1 gold penny = 20 sp (1 AD&D gp) 250 to 1 lb *rarely used
1 gold crown = 320 sp 16 to 1 lb.

While largely a matter of personal preference I find that the silver penny-gold crown setup restores a lot of the WOW factor to finding the gold. Silver is used for normal day to day transaction.

Some other types of money I use with this system are

1 silver mark = 240 silver penny = 1 lb. This is a silver bar stamped with a maker/mint mark.

1 gold mark = 5120 silver penny = 1 lb. This is a 1 lb gold bar.

[fitz]

I've got a little illustrated thing about the size of D&D money on the S&W page of my site. (I've only dealt with gold pieces so far)

[machfront]

Wow.

I've long thought the size and weight of the coins, as well as the prices in D&D in general were highly absurd and lest of all, annoying and impractical.... but, man.. actually seeing a full handful of 20 'D&D coins' really puts it in perspective.
Sheesh.
Were they 'gold pieces', what's in that huge, hulking handful is what it would take to buy two stinking lanterns for F's sake. You'd need twice that amount to buy a longbow.

[calithena]

Forearm-sized Melnibonean gold wheels are fun.

[waysoftheearth]

Oct 16, 2009 6:33:00 GMT -6 @chgowiz said:

One question.. you were talking in the text that you were simulating "gp" with 2 coins - and in the pictures you were referring to them as "sp"? Was that deliberate?

Oops, I thought I noted "sp" as "simulated pieces". I've updated the original post.

[billhooks]

I've pretty much made up my mind to say, if I run for a group that cares, that g.p. and s.p. and all that are units of account, so when I say you got 200 gp, the literal number of coins in there is ambiguous but quite a bit more. That's the best way I can think of to deal with it without having to redo any tables in different units.

[harami2000]

This one'll run and run and run...

Oct 16, 2009 14:17:53 GMT -6 fitz said:

I've got a little illustrated thing about the size of D&D money on the S&W page of my site. (I've only dealt with gold pieces so far)

Sleek site and nice pic (Cc-by-sa-3.0, btw) and the hyperbolic "hoots and squalls of outrage from the "realists" who insist that such coins would be the size of dinner plates" got a chuckle, too. Interesting that your chosen coin was minted at almost exactly 100 to the (modern) pound.

Your "3mm thick" example might benefit from an explanation that casting (q.v. cash) would be highly likely to obtain such neatly stacking coins given the tech level in most campaigns since it's not the diameter, but the thickness that's the "issue" as noted on the DF thread.

Cheers,
David.

[Deleted]

Gotta say... I think the very first house rule I ever used way back in 1979 was the changing of coin weights. I think a silver piece in my game came in at 240 to the pound. Of course that didn't always make treasure more portable since I frequently used monster treasure to "buy" and equal value of stuff.

If a monster had 240sp (1 pound) I would usually give them 10-30 coins and the rest be in armor, weapons, rugs, nicer furniture, animals (food supply?), art, etc.

[Bard]

Wonderful pictures!

I'm showing the last one to my players... :-)

[Malcadon]

I have always taken an abstract approach to the size and shape of money. When I tell my players they find a bag of 50sp, what I'm actually saying they found a bag of mostly sliver coins of different types, with some mixed coins of gold and copper, totaling to about the 50 sp or so, more or less. Only when they look through it, sort it out, or count them up, would I get a little more detailed. I do like to describe the more unique types of coins that get thrown into the batch (oddly-shaped ones, and ones with interesting designs on them), but I avoid describing each and every coin because it gets really tedious, really fast!

I really like the pictures of all the $1-sized copper coin props. This really reinforce the fact that copper pieces in D&D are a deathtrap into themselves - given their size and value, it usually not worth hauling around, unless you cant find better.

[harami2000]

Oct 18, 2009 16:52:07 GMT -6 Malcadon said:

This really reinforce the fact that copper pieces in D&D are a deathtrap into themselves

... funny you should mention that! ;D

[jdn2006]

I remember as a kid how we ignored a lot of things, so nothing hurt the game or our fun...

But, we would merrily go along and we'd find a large sack in a treasure chest holding some 2,000 coins, and some gems, and giant centipedes and so on. We'd loot the entire thing, cart it back, sell it all off or split it up and bank it or buy stuff. A few days later (broke) we'd hit pay dirt (a pile of coins) start filling our now empty large sack and the DM would say, "It only holds 600 coins." So we'd take some stuff out and put it in the empty chest and the DM would say "It only holds 500 coins."

We wouldn't notice how odd it was the sacks and treasure chests seemed to shrink and swell almost by will...

Changing the coins to weigh 100 per pound and enforcing a reasonable encumbrance system (ignore small stuff, don't sweat things that might vary a lot, and so on) made it all that much easier to relate to (and keep up with) what was going on. With the right encumbrance system and so on, a pile of coins is still a pile of coins -- and still might require some mules to help cart it out.

[Thorulfr]

Here's a little riddle for you:

What weighs more: a pound of gold, or a pound of feathers?

No, it's not a trick question - the pound of feathers weighs more. There are two different "pounds": the Troy pound, and the Avoirdupois pound. Troy pounds are used for weighing precious metals, and was about 373 grams, while the Avoirdupois pound is the 'regular' pound at about 454 grams. "Avoirdupois" is from the French "measured in pounds", meaning 'common goods'.

So - here's the other side of that riddle:
What weighs more: an ounce of gold, or an ounce of feathers?

Answer: the ounce of gold.
There are only 12 troy ounces in a troy pound, so the troy ounce is about 3 grams heavier than a normal ounce.


Why do I bring this up? (I mean aside from being an insufferable know-it-all...) When Charlemagne set the 'pennyweight' at 240 pennies to the pound, he was talking about Troy pounds. Silver pennies were about 1.5 grams apiece, close enough that you can round off to 3 silver pieces to the gold piece - or about 100 GP or 300 SP to the (avoirdupois) pound. (of course, back then they were also talking in terms of 'grains', not 'grams' - there were 24 grains in a pennyweight, or 5760 grains in a troy pound. There are 7000 grains in an avoirdupois pound.)

A "Pound Sterling" was a troy pound of the silver alloy popularized by the germanic silversmiths ("Easterling Silver", which later corrupted to "Sterling silver") - 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper.

The "Mark" (like the "Talent"*) was a unit of weight - 8 troy ounces, or 2/3 of a (troy) pound. So a Mark of silver works out to 160 silver pennies, while a Mark of gold would be a little more than 53 of the gold Solidi from Byzantium.


(My father collects ancient and medieval coins - a real silver penny is a bit lighter than a dime, but bigger around and much thinner.)


If you wanted to add to the player's headaches, a popular pastime for many governments was 'debasing' currency. They would collect all the old coins they could find (usually by passing edicts that required everyone to turn in their coins), melt them down, add in a bit more base metal like copper, and then re-mint the coins. Once they'd done this several times in a row, the coins would be pretty worthless. (Now in the days of paper money, they just have to print some more - but the effect is pretty much the same.)
A party might find a cache of coins, only to find out that they are worth much less than they imagined.



* If you want to get Ancient, rather than Medieval, the Greek drachma varied in weight from one state to another, but the 'standard' was about 4.3 grams - close enough to call it 100 to the pound. A "Talent" was about 26 kilos, or 6000 drachmai. Incidentally, one talent of silver was the wages needed to pay the crew of a trireme for one month. Keeping a fleet of ships running was an expensive proposition.

[kesher]

Wow. There are many people on this board who know an insane amount of obscure things. Beautiful!

I have no idea how I'm going to use this info, but I'm going to use it somehow...

[makofan]

Now THAT is an EXALT!

[Thorulfr]

Thank you very kindly.
The OTHER side of the "debased currency" issue could be equally fun: faced with an order to turn in their silver/gold coins so they could be issued the new, debased, coins, someone might have hidden a large cache of coins. So the party comes along, finds the coins, and spends them, not knowing that they are really worth several times their apparent 'face value'

I'll need to check, but if I recall correctly Henry VIII picked up the nickname "Old Brazen Nose" because he debased one of the silver coins by making it brass with a thin wash of silver over it. The layer if silver would rub off of the high places first, giving the face of the king a prominent brass nose.

Edit: Yep, Henry VIII, and the coin was the groat (4 pence).

[Thorulfr]

One thing to remember about the "Mark": as I said, it is a unit of weight. While a mark of silver has a value of 160 SP, it rarely contained 160 silver coins. They usually had an assortment of coins of different weights and origins - English pennies, Arabic deniers, Byzantine hexagrams - mixed in with an amazing array of silver jewelry, tableware, amulets, even chunks of statues or larger pieces... "Hack silver" was the term. One popular type of item was arm rings or bracelets made from a heavy spiral of silver bar - you could wear it until you spent it all, and pieces could be cut off as desired to make 'change'.

[capheind]

Another way to confuse your character is to enjoy the realities of royal decree. Often coins would be worth more for the mear reason that that the king said so, foreign or outdated currency, or using unminted precious metals as currency may be illegal. I'd say that after any good dungeon crawl the players would do well to hide their cache until a proper fence "moneychanger" whatever had been found, who could evaluate it, remint as needed, or disperse as needed, after taking his cut.

Then again if your characters exist in a much more fractured or chaotic time maybe minting doesn't matter at all, and everything is based on weight. They might take their 60 Gold coins to market only to have the scales reveal they've a paultry 10gp by weight.

[capheind]

I prefer an altogether less serious form of play than most, and have been thinking of using a currency system based on "polyhedral" coins, ala Polyhedral dice shapes. It just tickles my inner nerd in the most interesting ways. But i'm not sure that middle ages level tech could mint, as common currency, polyhedrons.

[Finarvyn]

Wel, it used to be said that George Halas (founder of the Chicago Bears) used to throw nickels around like manhole covers.

I would assume that nickels are somewhere around the same size as GP.

So, GP must be the weight of manhole covers.

[Thorulfr]

Apr 8, 2010 13:52:54 GMT -6 capheind said:

But i'm not sure that middle ages level tech could mint, as common currency, polyhedrons.

They wouldn't be 'minted' in the classic sense, but they could be cast. The Chinese used to cast their bronze coins, for example. One drawback is it makes them easier to counterfeit - one advantage of a die-struck coin is if it is copied by casting, it is easier to spot the seam-line around the edge. Modern coins have milled or engraved edges to make it even harder to cast convincingly.

Your idea is not as weird as it might seem: the old Siamese (Thai) baht coins were called "bullet money" because of their shape: they took short bar and mashed it into a little ball, then stamped the denomination and royal seal onto a flat side.



Finarvyn: Yes, I've heard that the common gold coins were about nickel-sized.

Incidentally, my father has an interesting penny in his collection: I think it was from the reign of Alfred the Great, but it has a small, square hole near one side, obviously from having a square nail driven through it. It is a bit too far from the edge to have been for making it into jewelry (not uncommon at the time), and might have been nailed to someone's roof-beam as a protective amulet - the king's image keeping away evil.

[EdOWar]

Wow, great information about currency here. Many thanks, this gives a lot of food for thought.

[capheind]

Thorulfr: Exalt worthy.

Well I was thinking of using White Box (when my set gets here) for "by the box" pickup games and general fun, and I was thinking describing the shape of the coins by holding up dice would be worth a giggle or two.

[Thorulfr]

Thank you...

One advantage/drawback to having round, lump-like coins (depending on whether you are on the giving or the receiving end): the silver pieces would make GREAT sling bullets against lycanthropes.

...for that matter, the density of gold would make them great sling bullets in a pinch. (ouch!)

"Sure, you can have out gold..after you dig it out of your forehead!" ;D

[Deleted]

Somewhere around 1977 I switched to using medieval English coinage. Pennies were the usual coin. The shilling was purely a money of account. Half pennies literally were just that. Et cetera.

Tons of fun.

And for xp purposes 1 shilling = 1 XP, modified per usual.

[Fireangel]

Page B47 in Moldvay states clearly and unequivocally:

"All coins are about equal in size and weight. Each coin is about the size and weight of an American half-dollar piece."

A 1964 US Kennedy half-dollar is 30.6mm in diameter and weighs 12.5 grams (approximately 40 to a pound). Being 90% pure silver, it is a good approximation of a D&D silver piece both in size and composition. A British half-crown is close enough to substitute.

A gold coin of that size (exactly) will weigh in at around 17 grams, which is very close to US One Eagle $10 gold coins from the 19th and early 20th century, which were 90% pure gold (10% silver) and again, a very close approximation to the gold composition of good-quality medieval European gold coins. The Eagle coins are a bit smaller in diameter, but thicker, so that they have approximately the same volume as the half dollar.

For copper pieces, just find a pre-decimalisation British penny; they are 95.5% copper, with the remainder being tin. They are also almost exactly the same size and weight as a US half dollar.


The "ten gold pieces = one pound" (standard pound, by the way; not troy) comes from the encumbrance rules, which seem to assume loose coins. In the Moldvay edition, this "one tenth of a pound" unit was called a "coin", abbreviated "cn". In AD&D's first edition, they renamed it the "Gold Piece Weight" of "GPW".

By AD&D's 2nd edition, this unit of weight was done away with: all coins remained approximately the same "half-dollar" size, but now weighed in at 50 to a pound. This remained the same in every edition since.

[waysoftheearth]

Welcome to the boards Fireangel

Oct 13, 2012 16:49:52 GMT -6 Fireangel said:

Page B47 in Moldvay states clearly and unequivocally:

"All coins are about equal in size and weight. Each coin is about the size and weight of an American half-dollar piece."

Of course we know that gold is twice as dense as silver and copper, so gold coins cannot be both the same size and same weight as silver or copper coins. Moldvay's statement should probably, therefore, be read as a general guide, unless one wants to assume that gold coins are merely gold-plated copper coins


For me, in the two years or so since I made the original post, I've decided that 20 coins to the pound is ideal because it means that the Australian 50 cent piece is a very near approximation of an average D&D coin.

That means I can physically put a bag of one hundred 50 cent pieces on the table, and the players can pick it up and visualise what carrying a sack of a hundred coins about would be like.

I have also thought about buying 23 kg (50 lb) of cheap metal ring washers from a hardware store. 1,000 coins would weigh 50 pounds at 20 coins to the pound, so a wooden crate filled with 50 pounds of washers would be a nice approximation of a chest filled with 1,000 coins. To date, I have been too preoccupied with other stuff to actually go out and do this

[Fireangel]

Thanks! ;D

When it comes to actual coinage, silver and gold are not as far apart in weight as one might think, given the impurities needed to make the coins durable.

I keep a bag (a dice bag, actually) with 100 pre-65 silver half dollars handy for just that reason. I keep another one with pre-decimalisation British pennies (with a few 10gr Spanish coins of 19th century vintage... and nearly zero numismatic value) for the same reason.