History Main / CheapGoldCoins

* ''Literature/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.

* In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'', the money system goes brass, silver and gold and is based on UsefulNotes/OldBritishMoney. The 4th edition core rulebook gives the main coinages in the Empire the equivalent modern value of 1 brass penny = £1, 1 silver shilling = £12 and 1 gold crown = £240. Outside of adventures, most characters earn a wage based on their status in society, with the lowest of the low earning between 2-20 pennies a week and the richest of the rich as much as 5 crowns. Either way, it is as likely for a PlayerCharacter to be toting around a thousand gold crowns (or their equivalent) as it is for most people to walk around with 240,000 pounds on their person nowadays -- which is to say, not very.

* ''Literature/{{Magic 20}}'': Everyone in medieval England (renamed Camelot under the advice of a wizard calling himself Merlin) uses gold coins as pocket change. This is likely due to the fact that the wizards are capable of conjuring large amounts of gold at will, thus greatly depreciating its value. Jimmy even implies they're doing this on purpose, so that Camelot will never try to invade another country for their gold.

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

* Justified in "LightNovel/LogHorizon" all gold in the world comes from monsters dying, which then comes from an endless supply created from basically nothing as far as we know, so gold is far more common in the world because it is far more abundant or at least easily available.

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* justified in "LightNovel/LogHorizon" all gold in the world comes from monsters dying, which then comes from an endless supply created from basically nothing as far as we know, so gold is far more common in the world because it is far more abundant or at least easily available.

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The most common gold coins of the era were worth around six shillings (a bit under a third of a pound) or more, so for most people, one (generic) gold coin would represent at least a few weeks' earnings, if not a few months'. You would not use gold to do your grocery shopping. Before the mid 13th century, gold coinage didn't even exist-- the main coin was the silver penny[[note]]which was for the longest time the ''only'' coin other than its denominations the half-penny and farthing[[/note]], which had a purchasing value of about 10 USD[[note]]From "Daily Life in the Middle Ages", by Paul B Newman[[/note]].

* With the conquest of the Boer republics and their valuable mines in 1902, gold flooded the British markets and the Gold Sovereign (a 1-pound coin) became an everyday item, possibly making Edwardian Britain one of the few RealLife examples of this trope. [[RealityEnsues On the other hand,]] the proliferation of cheap gold meant that the value of the pound fell dramatically, causing prices to inflate by a third and the value of wages to fall by 13%.

* ''VideoGame/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.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeARealAmericanHero'' episode "Money to Burn", Cobra Commander uses a plasma transmitter to detonate all cash in the United States so that he can blackmail civilians to trade in their material goods for "Cobra Currency" - gold coins with his face on it. At the end, G.I. Joe detonates the Cobra Currency supply sending those coins flying all over the snow-burdened mountains where they were battling Cobra troopers, who get busy trying to collect those coins for themselves as while Baroness tries to talk them out of doing so asserting that it's just gold-painted polymer alloy that is worthless to them if the Joes succeed in blocking widespread distribution of those coins to all civilians - which they do.

** ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' [[http://www.goblinscomic.com/09092006/ once]] parodied the poorly thought out prices in the Player's Handbook.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' gradually manifested this trope as it became easier to acquire money over time. When the game first came out, five gold pieces represented a fairly substantial amount of money, but after several expansion packs, most players have cash reserves in the hundreds of thousands or 'millions' of gold pieces.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' gradually manifested this trope as it became easier to acquire money over time.

* ''ComicBook/CerebusTheAardvark'': Partially averted, in that Cerebus is able to buy room and board at an inn for the rest of his natural life with a single gold coin -- but only because his and the Cirinists' abortive attempt at [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascension]] used up all the gold in the economy.

*** Not really. A dagger, that is, a knife designed for combat, not utility purposes, would be made of high-quality steel. A utility knife would be cheaper.

** In 1st Edition the widespread use of gold coins was explained in the Dungeon Master's Guide as being a result of "gold rush" economics. Adventurers were constantly going out and raiding lost tombs and monster hoards, bringing back the gold they found and spending it. This led to serious inflation and a significant decrease in the value of gold.
*** Which is handled fairly realistically in [[http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2005-09-07 this]] ''{{ComicStrip/Nodwick}}'' comic.

* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' Dungeon crawl adventures. A copper piece is worth about a dollar, while a gold coin is closer to $80.
** The basic set campaigns book suggests that if you want a more realistic setting make a copper farthing worth $1 and a silver penny half the diameter $4, and exchanging silver and gold at a 20 to 1 rate. But if a GM wants wealth to be less portable they could make a dollar equivalent to a one ounce silver coin and thus make a one ounce gold piece worth $20.

** for those unfamiliar with the show, ''Series/{{Galavant}}'' is about as historically accurate as ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'' and ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys''

* ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'' runs on the silver standard, but you usually end up spending hundreds of coins at a time. At one point a character from the counterpart of Europe argues that the Empire should use gold as currency, "just because".

* Subverted in ''Series/{{Galavant}}'', Madalena puts a bounty of six gold coins on Sid's head. He tries to convince a crowd of peasants who want to turn him in that it's too small a price for someone's life, and one of them retorts that it's enough to buy a farm.