"Items" in your hand.

[earthbounddx]

Originally Posted by MunchkinMan

I will note that what earthboundx did qualify his comment, in a way, with the word "monetarily," meaning, to me at least, that he was referring to a situation where something required you to discard 500 GP of Items and you only had a 200 GP Item in play while holding several Item cards in your hand. Under that circumstance, you're not required to discard the cards in your hand to make up the difference unless the effect causing you to discard said otherwise.

That was indeed what I meant, sorry for the confusion.

In regards to the bolded "not required", my initial post was also clarifying that not only are you not forced to discard those cards to feed a gold piece requirement but also that you cannot use them, even willingly, to protect items you have in play from being discarded or to prevent a level loss through inability to pay (e.g. Income Tax) or to meet a requirement to play a card (e.g. Dungeon Casino).

[MunchkinMan]

Originally Posted by earthbounddx

In regards to the bolded "not required", my initial post was also clarifying that not only are you not forced to discard those cards to feed a gold piece requirement but also that you cannot use them, even willingly, to protect items you have in play from being discarded or to prevent a level loss through inability to pay (e.g. Income Tax) or to meet a requirement to play a card (e.g. Dungeon Casino).

That is also correct, but I'll put some official blessing on that lest anyone think you're wrong in that assessment.