Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

In the real Middle Ages, what sort of monetary value did the precious metals have (as opposed to various RPG and fantasy conventions)?

That is, suppose I had an ounce (in today's American standard measure) of gold, silver, copper, etc in, say, 1250? What sort of buying power did that ounce of metal have? How did it vary across Europe?

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

A couple of past threads with links to historical prices:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=22939
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=32778

And a link to many, many links I haven't yet followed:
http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/RDavies...t/howmuch.html

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

I don't know about gold, but I've seen the figure that a pound of silver was around 240 days' wages for a farmhand or laborer, or 80 for a journeyman in a guild. Going with the GURPS $ figure of $300 as a month's cost of living for a Struggling character with Status -1, or $3600 a year, and figuring 300 working days in a year, I get $12 a day, or $2880 for a pound of silver. This is rather higher than the GURPS Basic Set value of $1000 for a pound, but historically precious metals were scarce in the Middle Ages; most exchange was barter rather than currency-based.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

here a price list in german. http://www.mittelalter-server.de/Mit...er_Preise.html

For those poor souls unable to read german, here a shortened list:

10 chicken, 1 gramm silver
1 kg grain, 3 gramm silver
1 knife, 3 gramm silver
1 pig, 30 gramm silver
1 cow/ox, 100-137 gramm silver
1 sword, 300-500 gramm silver
1 horse, 800 gramm silver
1 battle horse, 5000-8000 gramm silver
1 gramm gold, 20 gramm silver

453 gramm are one american lbs

In th early middle age a "pfennig/penny/denarii" was ~ 2 gramm silver, this later came down to 1 gramm silver per pfennig.

So a horse was almost 2 lbs of silver (or in later time 3-4 lbs of coins, due to less silver in the coins), or 1 1/3 ounces of gold.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Oh, and 1 "denarii", one silverpenny was in the early middle ages what a farmhand earned a day. And the Karlspfund (charles pound, ~430 gramm/0.95 lbs) was the equialent to 240 pennies. Later this changed, when the coins became less pure. But for smplicities sake you can assume:

2 gramm silver = 1 days wage for simple labour

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Frightening to think that one could snort a week's wage... literally.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

The used coins where extremely thin, and in the early age where even "hacked" into halfpence or quarterpence.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Well, a modern US ounce (ounce Avoirdupoids) is 28.375 grammes, which would have minted as almost 21 English pennies in 1250. (Coins in other countries were already debased by 1250.) That would hire a labourer for about 16 days, or buy 420 eggs, or seven gallons of Gascon wine in London, or 42 gallons of beer in Somerset, four or five cheap swords, . . . . According to whether the harvest were good or bad, the price of wheat in the middle of the 13th century might be 28 to 60 pence per quarter (eight bushels), and your 21 pence might buy six bushels of wheat or it might only buy three.

I don't know. Though presumably the value of silver must have been lowest in southern Germany, where the richest mines were.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Quarterpence are called "farthings" in English.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Precious metals got steadily more plentiful, as rich silver-mines in Germany put metal into circulation faster than the economy grew. In terms of silver, prices and wages in general rose by about a factor of four from about 1100 to about 1400.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

The only problem I have with this is that even in the US today we don't use standard measures for precious metals, we use the Troy measurements.

So while 453 grams = 1 US standard pound (16 ounces), 1 troy pound (12 troy ounces) weighs in at only about 369-370 grams.

So, at least here in the US, when you hear about 1 oz. of silver or gold being worth x amount, they're talking about (roughly) 31 (30.8) gram troy ounces as opposed to the roughly 28 (28.3) gram US standard ounces.

For game purposes that may not mean much, but, to use your example of the simple laborer, at the end of a month using the US standard weight system Mr. Peon has been cheated out of roughly three days wages.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Well, I did calculate the ounce with 30 gramm, soo ... ok I did cheat as well ^^.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

To be precise, the Avoirdupoids pound is 454 grammes (by definition), and the Troy pound is 373 grammes.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Fair enough. (Not sure how many letters/words long this needs to be to get through the minimum limit filter.)

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

That's what I get for trying to do the math myself.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Well no. To be *precise* an international avoirdupois pound is .45359237 kilograms, since the US and Commonwealth compromise definition in 1958. Previously they had differed by a fraction of a part per million. I confess I had to look that up, the number I had to memorize mumblety years ago is 453.6 grams, which is pretty close.

A troy pound is 5760 grains by definition, and since this agreement also redefined the grain it redefined the troy weights too, the troy pound is .373241721 kilograms.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

And boy are the peasants going to be mad when they notice that you clipped the ninth decimal place...

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

^^, actually the most german GURPS players I know are a bit more generous. We usually count like this

1 mile = 1.5 km / 1500m
1 yrd = 1 m
1 foot = 0.3 m OR 1/3 m
1 inch = 2.5 cm

1 qrt gallon = 1 l
1 gallon = 4 l

1 lbs = 0.5 kg
1 ounce = 30 g

and so on. As you can probably calculate this diverges from real values by 10% and more sometimes. So "german" GURPS chars usually don't run 5 yrds per second, but 5 m, which is a whooping 5.47 yrds. But usually the distances are also simply converted from yard to meter 1:1.

I'd say a derivation of 10 or even 20% isn't much of a hassle as long as the conversion is consistent. Problems start once you get over that 10-20% limit.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Download Convert.exe if you want an easy to use and comprehensive unit measure coversion tool .
It is freeware and very simple not to mention well made .

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

You can add brazilian players to that account. The translated version of GURPS Basic 3e has the same assumptions, so it's not just players. Particularly
1 yrd=1m=1hex
1 foot = 1/3m = 1/3 hex
1 qrt gallon = 1l
1 gallon = 4l
1 lb = .5kg

Because the above are used in formulas, yards in distances in the range table, magic, etc... the same with lbs (wich is used to calculate encumbrance). Miles and ounces though can be converted mathematically, as they have almost no common usage in game mechanics.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

There are other tools online, but like I said the rounded versions are used in GURPS mechanics so if you actually use the precise conversion you'll screw up the compatibility between stats in the metric and non-metric version of GURPS.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

I would probably go with a middle-of-the road valuation, to reflect that there's a glut of dungeon-recovered and dwarf-mined gold and silver on the market, but that a pouch of purely gold coins should still represent a smallish fortune.

So, perhaps:

Gold pieces (GP) aka crowns or eagles - $20, 50 ~ 9g coins to the GURPS (avoirdupois) pound ($1,000 per lb), may be frequently hacked into quarter bits worth $5.

Silver pieces (SP) aka dollars or thalers or silver pennies - $1, 50 ~9g coins to the GURPS (avoirdupois) pound ($50 per lb), may be frequently hacked into quarter bits or farthings worth $0.25.

Copper pieces (CP) aka coppers or copper pennies - $0.05, 50 ~9g coins to the GURPS (avoirdupois) pound ($2.50 per lb). May

So, starting wealth for somebody of Average or Comfortable Wealth can easily be carried in a belt pouch if it's purely gold, a backpack if silver. On the other hand, a dragon's hoard that weighs a literal ton and needs a wagon or multiple pack animals to get back to town is worth a cool $2 million, which is really quite a high level of Filthy Rich and buys quite a bit of stuff at TL3 prices. It might be difficult to get back to the closest town, but once there it might represent greater wealth than the total worth of said town.

And improvising good wagons or other apparatus for transporting treasure troves back to civilization might be one of the niche roles for a hypothetical Artificer template.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

vitruvian, there is a VERY big difference between silverpennies and silverdollar/taler.

A silverpenny is a very small coin of approx 2g silver value, and was important during the middle age (TL 3). Weight 1 -2 g, diameter ~15 mm (0.6 inch), thickness ~0.5 mm (0.2 inch). A very small and thin coin.

A german/austrian taler, was a real large coin of 23.3 g silver value. Its main time came in the age of sail (TL 4), and later the spanish dolaro as well as the american silver dollar was minted with a similar weight (24 g).
Weight: 23 -30 gramm, so almost an ounce, diameter 40 mm (1.6 inch), thickness 2,5 mm (0.1 inch). So a big and heavy coin.

Re: Precious metal values in Middle Ages...
 

Historically, absolutely. I was going for a gross simplification for DF purposes (where it would probably be too much of a pain to keep track of two kinds of 'silver pieces'), and mixed up the threads.

Not a complete jest --
 

. . . everything I've read about medieval peasants indicates that while almost all were illiterate they had a VERY keen sense of value and knew when they were being cheated.

Take a look at "The Return of Martin Guerre" for a good look at early modern peasant society -- not much different in values from their medieval predecessors.

"Wot? It's the Renaissance already?" [throws another heaping helping of dung on to the field] "Could have fooled me, lad."