RE: (TFT) Babble

["Jay Carlisle" <selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com>]

> 1 gram = 15.432 grains.
> 
>   A 9mm round is 147 grains. A M1 Garand is 150 grains. A 50. Cal is 600
> grains.
> 

I can NOT resist pointing out the similarity to coin weight here.
By weight, they may as well be firing nickels.
Or drachma.

Using the Drachma (4.2923 grams), 5000 silver coins weigh about 57 and a
half pounds. I'd call 5000 coins weighing over fifty pounds a bag of gold.

(Note here: This was awhile back. I now know just how big that bag is.)

So lets call each coin a shade over 4.1 grams so that bag weighs in right at
55lbs. 
Why the extra five pounds? Why not a nice round 50lbs? 
Well 10 bags of 50,000 coins (a good
tresure even by Monster Manual standards) would weigh 550lbs. and a good
horse can lift 550lbs. 1ft. in 1 second aka 1 horsepower. Much of early
Blackmoor was about moving things around.

(Also from a past post)

There was a bit about a month ago on diffrent bimetalic, trimetalic, etc. monatary systems and Electrum was brought up. Some folks had problems with it because it was difficult to determine the value of the alloy. I got a bit curious as to why it would have made it into something like D&D in the first place and a bit of research came up with the following; 



The ancient kingdom of Lydia in Aisa Minor on the Aegean Sea minted the first coins in it's capital of Sardis. The coins were small oval-shaped bits of metal made of electrum. Before this metals were traded in chunks that had to be weighed by money dealers in the market place to determine their value. Later on these chunks were shaped into bars of a given weight that was stamped with a die to mark it. These dies were wedged shaped pieces of very hard metal and were called coins. The last king of Lydia was named Croesus and was known for his great wealth. He is credited with minting the first pure gold coins and is the source of the saying "as rich as Croesus". Typicaly coins were valued by taking a given weight of metal and breaking it into parts (usually 60) each part then being struck as a coin. The first "inflation" occured when a base metal was added to the metal being broken into parts for minting. 

"from Coins and Coin Collecting, golden press"


Jay
".... but is it Chiba?"




Cigerettes and wiskey and wild, wild women!

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