Size of Gold Pieces

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Anableps
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Size of Gold Pieces

Post by Anableps »

It seems that the standard currency in the NEQ is the "gold piece". But how big do you imagine them being?
JH
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Post by JH »

What is the largest number that anyone is described as carrying with them? If we hear that someone had fifty gold pieces in their bag, for instance, then they can't be very big or very heavy.
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Noise Tank
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Post by Noise Tank »

I always imagine them larger than they probably should be (About the size of a half-doller). In reality, they're probably equivalent to a quarter or so.
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Post by Lost Soldier (Ib) »

I imagine them to be the size of one of Snorbin's nipples.

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Anableps
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Post by Anableps »

I always imagine them larger than they probably should be (About the size of a half-doller). In reality, they're probably equivalent to a quarter or so.
I had a similarly inflated idea of the "historical midieval" size of a coin. For some reason, I imagined them as being about the size of a double eagle - the US $20 gold coin minted around 1900. These were a bit larger than the half dollar, but about triple the weight. So I was interested in seeing if others thought of the "gold piece" as being a large coin.

The reason that I brought the question up was that I saw an exhibition of gold coins from the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe from about 800, and they were tiny - about the diameter of a size AA battery.

They were thin, too. I did not get a chance to handle them, of course, but they appeared to be little thicker than a sheet of foil in some cases. Now 1200 year old coins will have some wear, but the exhibit noted that some of the coins were only struck on one side because striking the tail of the design would distort the head. So they were thin at the start.

The NEQ is a fantasy, of course, and you can imagine the gold piece to be any size you like, subject to physical laws.
El' MooCow
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Post by El' MooCow »

I think of 1 Gold Piece being worth about $10. Remember, people were pretty darn poor those days.

In terms of how big they are?
Well, I was about to say the size of a dollar coin but I remembered you have paper-notes for dollars in the US.

(I'm Australian.)
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Sir Toby
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Post by Sir Toby »

El' MooCow wrote:Well, I was about to say the size of a dollar coin but I remembered you have paper-notes for dollars in the US.
We have dollar coins in the US, but they aren't very common. I see them most often from government-run vending machines, such as stamp vending machines. Hardly see them anywhere else though.
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Post by El' MooCow »

Darn yanks. Need to convert to metric. :P
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