Re: The golden problem of Cidri
 

One of the byproducts of Alchemy's Philospher Stone is turning base metals into gold. So there would be a low quantity of gold being 'created' all the time.

Re: The golden problem of Cidri
 

That's what I ended up settling on as well.

The handwave / in-setting justification I used is that the silver-to-gold ratio was originally 10:1, but then shifted over time to 100:1, with 'gold' coins becoming more and more debased until they were less than 10% gold, with the remainder being close to equal proportions of silver and copper. Then caches of "old" gold coins were discovered and started to circulate at a ratio of 100 silver to each old-gold coin. The debased coins started to be referred to as 'electrum' pieces, and new, un-debased gold coins started to be minted with a face value of 100 silver dollars.

Re: The golden problem of Cidri
 

In Etan, my TFT game world, there are natural super-natural processes that do this. In my other worlds, alchemists are able to transmute silver into gold (and back again) at whatever that world's silver-to-gold ratio happens to be fixed at. E.g. where the silver-to-gold ratio is 20:1 it takes 20 ounces of silver to alchemically produce 1 ounce of gold.

Which is why the silver-to-gold ration is fixed at whatever ratio: When excessive amounts of silver come on the market, lowering the price of silver relative to gold, then alchemists profit by transforming the excess silver into gold. And vice versa when there's a shortage of silver, raising its price relative to gold.

(This also occurs in Etan, but it's a much less important process there.)