History Main / CheapGoldCoins

* Averted in ''AnimaBeyondFantasy'', where 1 gold coin equals to 100 silver coins and the daily wage of unskilled labor is 1 silver coin.

For a basis of comparison, a "cheap sword for a peasant" cost six pence (1/40th of a pound) in the 1340s. In the 14th century an unskilled or semiskilled laborer working for wages-only would have earned around 1 to 2 pounds per year (a servant working for board plus wages might have earned as little as two shillings - a tenth of a pound). A middle-class urban family might earn 5-10 pounds per year.[[note]]Prices from ''Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages'' by Christopher Dyer.[[/note]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'', a gold piece is the tiniest unit of currency in the game. Level 1 monsters routinely carry up to 10 gold pieces (which they drop on the ground when you kill them). Vendors are willing to pay you 2 gold pieces for a ''damaged club'' (basically a broken stick). By level 10, you'll be carrying around (and paying) thousands of gold pieces. This becomes an issue due to logistics: every 5000 gold coins take up one unit of inventory space, forcing players to store gold in town. Apparently, massive piles of gold and other values were completely safe while sitting straight on the ground.

* In ''VideoGame/Diablo'', a gold piece is the tiniest unit of currency in the game. Level 1 monsters routinely carry up to 10 gold pieces (which they drop on the ground when you kill them). Vendors are willing to pay you 2 gold pieces for a ''damaged club'' (basically a broken stick). By level 10, you'll be carrying around (and paying) thousands of gold pieces. This becomes an issue due to logistics: every 5000 gold coins take up one unit of inventory space, forcing players to store gold in town. Apparently, massive piles of gold and other values were completely safe while sitting straight on the ground.

* In ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' and ''[[VideoGame/DiabloIII III]]'', a gold piece is the tiniest unit of currency in the game. Level 1 monsters routinely carry up to 10 gold pieces (which they drop on the ground when you kill them). Vendors are willing to pay you 2 gold pieces for a ''damaged club'' (basically a broken stick). By level 10, you'll be carrying around (and paying) thousands of gold pieces.
** In the second game, between players, the gold piece was even more devalued than it was with vendors. While a vendor might pay 140 gold for a single low-quality gemstone, already a pretty silly exchange, you'd have a hard time convincing a player to part with a single chipped gem even for all the gold he could physically carry (several hundred thousand).

** It's possible to mine gold in RuneScape, which is where things start to get weird. Gold ore and gold bars are almost worthless, being worth less than 100 coins and only used in making jewelry. This is partly due to the fact that they can't be crafted into coins outside of alchemy, which only results in a mere 180 coins at best. On the flip side, gold ''leaves'' are incredibly expensive, costing 130,000 coins, as they can only be purchased from an NPC who sells them as a ingredient for posh furniture. This results in a rather strange case where [[MindScrew a single sheet of gold is worth thousands of bars of gold.]]

* Also averted in ''Literature/{{Gate}}'', as the amount of reparations initially requested by Sugawara from TheEmpire as a reparation, 500 million suwani, turns up as more gold that probably ''exists'' in their world. For the notice, suwani is a ''really large'' gold coin weighing ~60 grams, with the couple of them often representing an average man's whole life savings. Otherwise the story pays little attention to the money, but the cost of a meal and a couple of beers paid by Yao in an Alnus tavern seems to be three or four copper pieces, which is about right for the High Medieval times.

* Also averted in ''LightNovel/{{Gate}}'', as the amount of reparations initially requested by Sugawara from TheEmpire as a reparation, 500 million suwani, turns up as more gold that probably ''exists'' in their world. For the notice, suwani is a ''really large'' gold coin weighing ~60 grams, with the couple of them often representing an average man's whole life savings. Otherwise the story pays little attention to the money, but the cost of a meal and a couple of beers paid by Yao in an Alnus tavern seems to be three or four copper pieces, which is about right for the High Medieval times.

* PippiLongstocking pays for everything with the gold coins in the chest her father left her. She's basically unaware of their real value, though (she once pays a whole handful of them to a sweets shop in exchange for candy for the children of the entire village!), and nobody seems especially willing to point it out to her.

** Done more sensibly in ''[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas Fallout: New Vegas]]'', since only Caesars Legion issues gold coins, and they're worth [[ShownTheirWork 25 of their silver coins]]. It's still only equivalent to [[WeirdCurrency 100 caps]] though.[[note]]Given that $100 of Pre-War Money is worth 10 caps, this is about equal to $1000 dollars, so it's roughly equivalent to today's gold prices, assuming the Aureus weighs 1 ounce.[[/note]]

** Done more sensibly in ''[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas Fallout: New Vegas]]'', since only Caesars Legion issues gold coins, and they're worth [[ShownTheirWork 25 of their silver coins]]. It's still only equivalent to [[WeirdCurrency 100 caps]] though.

* [[http://www.moneyinadvance.co.uk/sci-fi-currency-converter/ This site]] compares sci-fi and fantasy currencies to real life ones.

In RealLife gold coins were like hundred-dollar bills; only used for very large transactions[[note]]except, perhaps, for the gold one-dollar coins minted in the middle of the 19th century, which were about the size of a Half Dime[[/note]], and most people were unlikely to see very many in their lifetimes. But in many fantasy settings the most basic equipment costs dozens or even hundreds of gold pieces.

This is most likely to give players some point of familiarity by making the cost similar to what it would be in dollars, or yen in Japanese games (which might be why they tend to be worse with it, as the yen is currently worth about $0.01).

* Almost averted in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', where one gold coin equals 100 silver coins or 10,000 copper coins. IRL, the respective metals' prices ratio is about 427:8:1, so the balance is still a bit off comparatively.

* ''{{Nethack}}'': A fortune cookie costs 7 gold "zorkmids", a food ration 45 zorkmids, and artifact weapons cost a few thousand zorkmids. Back-calculation from the weight system suggests that a zorkmid weighs about 40 grams, or about one and a quarter troy ounces. At that size and those prices, gold wouldn't be worth much.

* Averted in ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheQuestor'', a gold coin is more money than many people see in their lifetime. And certainly [[http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00049.html enough to hire a Questor]], especially in the metal-poor Seven Villages where they normally use rings and beads instead of coins.

We strongly recommend the use of a certified safe for this gold ( [[http://www.infosafe.fr/coffre-fort-ignifuge/coffre-fort-ignifuge.htm coffre fort ignifuge agréé assurance]] )
Un coffre fort permet de sécuriser des valeurs et documents à l'abri du vol et du feu

We srtongly recomment the use of a certified safe for this gold ( [[http://www.infosafe.fr/coffre-fort-ignifuge/coffre-fort-ignifuge.htm coffre fort ignifuge agréé assurance]] )

* Averted in ''AnimaBeyondFantasy", where 1 gold coin equals to 100 silver coins and the daily wage of unskilled labor is 1 silver coin.

* Done more sensibly in ''{{VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas}}'', since only Caesars Legion issues gold coins, and they're worth [[ShownTheirWork 25 of their silver coins]]. It's still only equivalent to [[WeirdCurrency 100 caps]] though.