[Mkguild] A question of money exchange

[Ryx]

If the links had a smaller diameter they could all be put on a lanyard without being linked - making them into flat beads for all intents and purposes.  This works better than a linked chain that has to be broken, and then reassembled, for every darn purchase.  Size only becomes important in smaller denominations - i.e. 'change'.  Gold and silver would go by weight and have more varied appearances than copper or tin.


And copper, in that time period, is no easier to smelt than silver even if it is easier to find in quantity.  So making solid copper or alloyed copper currency would actually maintain a decent value.  Having for the most part expanded beyond the bronze age there would be little call for bronze, thus lessening the value of copper and tin overall.

Steel, on the other hand, would be a powerful and viable currency.  A kingdom that could forge high quality steel or better yet vanadium steel would be set to become a Power to contend with - like Metamor with their mithril.

Perhaps this distant kingdom might want an exchange more like:  Gold, silver, steel, bronze, iron, copper, tin?


And then we get into even more complex currencies that can only be refined by magical means (simple or complex) such as Mithril.  What other materials would require magic to refine from ore to product?  The discovery of that metal in quantities sufficient to mine can, and will, turn Metamor into a world dominating power within a century (at the slow rate of information and trade expansion in a trade wagon era)... if it's not beset upon from all sides for its riches.




On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:43 PM, Alex Green <alexsurikat at gmail.com> wrote:
 
tl;dr: The links don't weigh that much, but they're bigger than I expected.  100 links is really long, and they might be difficult to take apart.  
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>On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 3:59 PM, Ryx <sundansyr at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>Well, each culture or kingdom may come up with its own trade valuation system - i.e. coins or something the equivalent thereof.
>>A chain is perfectly viable, except for the fact that is a PITA to remove and add links.  If there's a gap in the link to hook them together there is always the risk of the whole thing collapsing.  
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>I agree with this.  The dimensions of the links as given by Anthony are 3/16th of an inch thick with an inside diameter of 1 inch.  I hadn't really bothered to try and visualize that before.  Looking around my desk, I discovered my monitor's cable is exactly 3/16th of an inch thick, so I made a loop with an inner diameter of one inch.  Each link is about the size of this loop.  As you can see, that's pretty large.  It's much larger and thicker than I expected it to be.  You would have to leave a fairly large gap in order to pass another link through.  Gold, silver, and copper are malleable metals, but I don't know if they would be malleable enough to bend a link enough to get it off the chain.  
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>>You're better off with beads on a thong/lanyard, even if they are *big* beads.  Native americans used such as a trade system in the past, though the value of the item was often up to the judgment of the individual with whom they're being traded.
>>One guy might be willing to trade a goat for an abalone bead, where the other guy doesn't much want abalone so is willing to part with a chicken for it.
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>For reference, beads made with the same alloys as the links would be .582 inches (14.8 mm) in diameter or just a little bigger than half an inch.  
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>>So, let's say each link/bead is a set weight (rather than size), let's just take ounce as a standard measurement, or grams, either way.  Since I understand ounce I'll work with that:  Each gold coin is roughly 1" in diameter and 2mm thick, with huge variances under the ancient coinmaking processes.  So let's estimate each one to be 1/4 to 1/3 ounce.  A few of these will add up quickly to some considerable eight around the neck.  Silver and copper are also very heavy malleable metals... and these are being worn around the neck...
>>A commoner might not have a problem with ten copper and a couple silver... but what about the guy buying for the Keep's larder?  He'll about lynch himself with money if he's not careful.
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>This is why I gave the weights of 100 link chains in the second to last paragraph of my last email.  As I stated there, the most valuable, and not so coincidentally the heaviest, 100 link chain would weigh almost 6 lbs (2.7 kg).  That's not particularly heavy, and it's worth 300 Garretts or $90000.  I don't think weight is going to be an issue for any one with a lot of purchases to make.  The MK Wiki says a Garrett weighs an ounce (I'm assuming troy), so the equivalent amount of Garretts would weigh 20.5 lbs (9.3 kg).  It would actually be easier to carry these links around as far as weight is concerned.  
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>However, after seeing the size of a link, the thing that concerns me most is the volume they would take up.  A chain of 100 links is going to be 100 inches long assuming they stay circular.  That's 8' 4" or 2.54 meters.  That might be a little difficult to keep coiled around one's neck.  
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>>So, beads will still have to be weighed, and there's no really convenient way to determine the purity of a given metal - in particular gold which is often adulterated to increase it's weight without adding more gold.  It's a complex system, but there's more than enough room in the setting to handle different monetary exchange systems.
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>That brings up another issue.  Copper is so relatively worthless that the least valuable coin has to be 1.75% silver to make it worth the $0.90 it's supposed to be.  No one could tell the silver content on sight, and even weighing them would be an insufficient method to determine whether it has any silver of if it's just pure copper (worth $0.14).  
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>Anyway, that's my two cents on the viability of these links as currency.  
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>-AlexSurikat
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