How Much Is a Gold Piece Worth?
posted Sunday, April 13th 2008 by
None of the Above
Back in 2006 I asked what a gold piece would be worth in modern currency. Enough has changed in two years (and it seems I made a few miscalculations) that I’ve decided to revisit the topic.
Since 2006, the price of a troy ounce of gold has shot up from US$565 to US$930. Since a troy ounce is actually slightly larger than a regular ounce, a standard pound (sixteen ounces) of gold is worth around US$13,570. With fifty gold pieces in a pound, a gold piece today is worth US$271.41, UK£137.72, or €172.52 to European gamers.
Of course, this assumes that D&D uses our modern pound weight, which before 1958 varied significantly between different countries. There’s also no guarantee that a “gold coin” will be pure gold. Coins intended for circulation have traditionally been made from gold alloyed with copper or silver for better durability.
This also assumes a modern economy, when the relative values of precious metals, goods and services have changed significantly since mediaeval times. If we take the more historically consistent measurement of a pint of common ale, a single gold piece today is worth somewhere between $80 and $160 US, £40-80, or €50-100.
What can I get for a dollar?
Suppose you discover a portal in your basement and decide to emigrate to the City of Greyhawk. What can you expect to be charged for goods and services?
- Manual labour (per day): $27 (gold standard), $12 (beer standard). Modern day ranges from $46.8 (USA federal minimum) to $87 (UK minimum).
- Mercenary (per day): $81 (gold standard), $36 (beer standard). Plus danger pay. Modern day equivalent is around $219.
- Tent: $2,700 or $1,200. More than a little off-base at ten to thirty times the cost of the modern counterpart.
- Riding horse: $20,250 (gold standard), $9,000 (beer standard). Half as much for a pony, and five times as much for a military grade mount. Surprisingly close to a modern-day motor vehicle.
Things get a little crazy when we move into the “strictly adventurers only” price range:
- Masterwork weapon: $39,600 to $89,100.
- Belt of Strength +4: Doubles the wearer’s physical strength for between £1.92 million and $4.32 million
- Warship: $3 million to $6.7 million.
- Ring of Three Wishes: $11.8 million to $26.4 million
Finally, for further comparison, consider what these real-world items would cost a D&D character to buy:
- Nonmasterwork handgun: 7sp – 14 sp, ammunition 1-2cp per ten bullets
- Car: around 75gp to 150gp; fuel costs 1cp/ten miles
- F-15E fighter jet: 222,000 to 500,000 gp, likely out of the price range of a single non-epic character
- Aircraft carrier: 16.7 to 37.5 million gp. Without aircraft.
Comments
Rue
April 13th, 2008
Considering in the PHB, you get given the size, & weight of a gold coin, couldn’t the purity be guessed at for more accuracy?
Jonathan Drain
April 14th, 2008
Rue: It’s trickier than it seems. The Players Handbook only gives us the width of a gold piece (30mm) and weight (one fiftieth of a pound), but doesn’t give us any measurement for the thickness.
Assuming I correctly remember my chemistry, the coin’s thickness would be equal to the mass (9.07g) over the density, divided by the coin’s face area (0.94cm2). From this we can calculate the thickness of the coin, given a certain purity of gold.
A pure gold coin would have a thickness of 5mm, or about one fifth of an inch. However, since the gold piece is in wide circulation the odds are it’s gold alloy for durability. Crown gold, or 22 carat gold, would make the coin 5.2mm thick. If we only use 75% gold and the rest copper, it can be as thick as 5.8mm. The thickest would probably be 9 carat gold at 7.5mm, although at this point the coin would be mostly copper.
Interestingly, all D&D coins are supposed to be the same size and weight, meaning that they only vary in thickness. This suggests the following thicknesses for coinage, all of which are 30mm wide:
Platinum: 4.5mm
Electrum: 6.5mm
Silver: 9.3mm
Copper: 10.7mm
Juan Navarro
April 14th, 2008
Haha! Amazing stuff. You even fit in Electrum!
My thinking is that it seems like Gold is of lesser value in a fantasy setting than in a real world setting, no?
You really figured this out though! Will be linking!
Zaratustra
April 14th, 2008
1 cm thick copper coins? That’d be -heavy-.
SunShadow
April 22nd, 2008
Interesting article, thanks!
@Zaratustra: remember, all coins are supposed to have the same weight :P
Ben
April 22nd, 2008
@ Juan
Yeah, it seems that gold is certainly of less worth in a fantasy setting, but it’s fantasy and thus there’s a fair amount of handwaving anyway. I hadn’t expected the coins to be that thick though… those are freaking huge… You kind of have to wonder at where they got all that gold in the first place though, as even if there was a single dragon’s treasure as large as Smaug’s from the Hobbit around in the world and then gold coins are much less in circulation among the regular populace than copper and silver as is generally hinted at in the PHB, there must have been a solid nodule of gold about a half-mile thick somewhere in the crust of the earth that people carved out in the past…. which would be really cool, actually.
Kevin
April 23rd, 2008
The tent styles you would find in a fantasy setting are in keeping with the prices you have. Check out http://www.pantherprimitives.com/medieval.html – the smallest tent of the appropriate style for medieval/renaissance Europe-type civilisations is US$1320 for:
10 x 10 foot tent in basic canvas, not marine canvas
poles, ropes, and stakes
canvas in alternating colours (typical – solid colour would be US$1125)
Ground pimples (the nylon things) aren’t the right style. You don’t wanna know how hard this would be to transport without a cart.
Adrian
May 2nd, 2008
So I guess the hypothetical question is, would it be worth dropping $4.32 million on a +4 Belt of Strength if you could use it while playing professional sports.
I am thinking linebacker in the NFL ?
Mathilda
June 7th, 2008
In regards to the measurements of coins, the Draconomicon states the following: “A typical coin measures slightly more than an inch in diameter and is approximately one tenth of an inch thick.” (p.278 ‘How big is the pile?’).
With a weight of 1 pound per 50 coins, that would give the gold of these coins a density of 7,05 kg/dm3. Pure gold has a density of 19,3 kg/dm3. No diluting with silver (10,50 kg/dm3) or copper (8,96 kg/dm3) will get the density low enough.
Mixing gold with aluminium (the lightest stable common metal) allows 6,28 carat coins (2,38 g gold/coin). Assuming a gold price of USD902,00 or EUR571,43 or GBP457,87 per troy ounce (31,10 g) would give the gold of one coin a value of USD69,03 or EUR43,73 or GBP35,04.
On the other hand; a crowbar in-game cost 2 gp, whilst a crowbar in the real world could be bought for 2 dollars. Meaning that any comparison between valuta is suspect at best.
Elsheran
August 24th, 2008
The mass produced Crowbar of today that is poured stamped and bent by machine in China, versus a hand wrought blacksmith’d crowbar….
William Barnes
October 1st, 2008
>> With a weight of 1 pound per 50 coins, that would give the gold of these coins a density of 7,05 kg/dm3. Pure gold has a density of 19,3 kg/dm3. No diluting with silver (10,50 kg/dm3) or copper (8,96 kg/dm3) will get the density low enough.
When I see this, I imagine a hexagonal coin with another hexagon stamped out of it like a doughnut. Dilute it with air.
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Nick
August 13th, 2010
Actually the coins are very thin. Jonathan’s calculation of the face area was off. If you divide 0.94cm2 by pi it equals a radius squared of .3 but the radius squared of a 3cm wide coin is 2.25. Which gives us an area of 7.07cm2. This means the following thicknesses for d&d coinage, all of which are 30mm wide, should be about:
Platinum: 0.6mm
Gold: 0.7
Electrum: 0.9mm
Silver: 1.2mm
Copper: 1.4mm