Currency in worlds

[fcbkid15]

Hey, i'm kinda stuck. I need a currency in my world, but I don't want to have just gold or silver. I have coins, but i don't know what to call them. I came up with the name casters, but i wanna know what you guys think about this stuff.

 

[Deborah Dalton]

I think casters sounds good - but you might have to be more specific. Like gold casters, half-casters, etc...

Your best bet is to do some research and find out what coins were called in ancient Rome or medieval Europe - there are literally hundreds of names in many languages to pick and/or adapt from.

 

[Telcontar]

It's pretty much anything you want. As Deborah said - coins were called all sorts of things. Roman currency, for instance, had official names as well as local nicknames all over the place.

Names are often taken from: Place of origin (think location of the mint that creates the coins), the images on them, the leader who they were originally issued under, and so on. Any tiny detail associated with the currency can become its conventional name. Have some fun with it!

 

[Caged Maiden]

Also as a side note, some things were named for their worth.. guinea pigs for example, were sold as food livestock, and they were the pigs you could buy for a guinea.
Also, in the 16th century, the crown (the most popular coin minted in England, and worth 5 shillings, or a quarter pound) was minted in both gold and silver. It was equal to a French crown, a Venetian ducat, and a Flemish gelder. so money could have different names even, depending on the region from which it came.

 

[Ravana]

Guilders, crowns, marks, royals, nobles, etc. Not to mention any number of slang names. What the coins are stamped with is a good choice (that's where "crown" came from, though it could as easily refer to the issuer). The geographical source of the coins works, too: florins were gold coins minted in Florence. Pieces of eight were called that because they were designed to be worth (and easily divided into) eight reals (="royals"). And so on.

-

I'd double-check that information, anihow. A guinea is equal to 21 shillings (=1£ 1s.)… there's no way anybody would have paid more than a pound of silver for a rodent.

 

[fcbkid15]

thanks guys. And in my worlds history, a king named caster had the idea to start making a currency, instead of just trading. Its kinda simple, but hey that how it goes in the real world.

 

[sashamerideth]

Then there is your currency name, Casters. Maybe a king caster is worth 1000, a queen caster worth 100, etc.

 

[BeigePalladin]

most currency was named after either the monarch/nation, or respective weight for the major demonations (crowns, franks, euro's, pounds (as in, pounds of gold it was worth) so that'd be a good start

casters sounds good, especially if magic is a part of your world, and you don't really need to think of denominations - most currencies only get 'pennys' etc when inflation/price changes has made using the prime currency alone inneficient, only we brits managed to come up with a tottaly obsolete and overcompleicated 8 denomination system

 

[Joe the Gnarled]

Others have given you good a good history of money in both real world and fiction. I will simply say that I like the sound of caster. It could be a slang name, or something official. You may even want to give some little story of how it got its name. Something like:

Lady Kori tossed a few casters into the beggars bowl. The irony of the action was not lost on her. Casters were named such from peasants who claimed all they were good for were throwing, or casting, to tax collectors.

 

[Argentum]

This is incredibly fascinating. I also have a problem in this area. For whatever reason, when I first started writing, I called the coins ' 'crescents'. And I've stuck with it. But I've now got other problems: Probably four crescents for a full moon (which will need a name), whether to keep it in silver and gold coins or strickly silver. What to name the copper coins, or simply call them copper pieces. What will the gold pieces be? Represented by the sun and the pieces rays of sun? How many copper pieces = 1 crescent? How many crescents = full moon and what is the value of it all exactly...? Can any of you tell me how you went about assigning value to your currency?

 

[sashamerideth]

Romans used something like one basic meal as their lowest denomination, I am doing something similar, building it around the value of a basic commodity.

 

[Ravana]

I found references on what the Roman Empire paid its soldiers, then went on the assumption that your average peasant could get by on roughly half of that. An assumption made all the easier when I also found that the Empire was in the habit of withholding up to 75% of the nominal pay to cover the soldier's expenses… which included food, shelter, clothing, armor and weapons, etc. Some of which the peasant wouldn't need; on the other hand, they would have some needs soldiers wouldn't–and either way, I knew with absolute certainty that someone would not need any more than 75% of that figure in order to at least manage a quite healthy existence. (The remaining 25% reflected the soldier's "spending money"–or at least his drinking, gambling and whoring money. Remember that Roman soldiers were professionals, not conscripts, so they ought to making more than the man in the street/field… and certainly expected to.) I kept the "core" coin silver, at 20 coins to the pound… not only because that's exactly how the British did it (that's what a "pound sterling" was), but also because that let me know what its size, thickness and weight was–those being conveniently almost identical to a U.S. dime–so I knew how many you could fit into a given space, or plausibly tote about without listing too heavily to one side.

What ratios you assign to other coinage are going to be pretty much up to you. Alter the scarcity of some other metal (gold, copper), and you get different ratios. I went with 1:20:20 just because it was easier than the old British 1:20:12 system… on the other hand, I could as easily have gone 1:20:10. I also made all the basic coins the same size (again for simplicity), though I added some other coins for the sake of variety and ease (or complication) of making change; so, for instance, there is a silver coin that is four times the size of a normal one and worth four times as much. You can also have coins of bronze, brass, tin, even iron–not all of which will necessarily be lower in value than copper: again, it depends on the scarcity of the resources involved, as well as in some cases the difficulty of extracting them. Tin, for making bronze or for using directly, is fairly easy; for that matter, bronze can include a wide variety of other easily-worked and/or less valuable metals, such as lead, antimony or bismuth. Iron, conversely, is harder to extract–much harder, in terms of the heat required to work it. (And brass requires zinc, which is less common and took some time to be recognized as a distinct component for metallurgy.)

The 1:20:20 ratio also made it work out well when I went with what is essentially the same assumption sashameridith did: at that ratio, the lowest denomination coin could provide subsistence-level eating for one day for one adult. (In this case, I assumed a "penny" could buy two middling-sized loaves of bread. If the buyer only wants one, you split the coin in half… very common historical practice.) Note that if you do go with that, then you will have a number of things that ought to cost less than a penny: a pint of ale or head of cabbage, for instance. How the culture copes with that is up to you: the barman runs a tab, the greengrocer sells you a certain weight or number of vegetables, etc.

 

[Argentum]

Thank you for taking the time to explain all that, Ravana! I understand now. I've got the coinage down, though I'm still working on the value. Who would have thought writing stories would make you learn so much?

 

[Ravana]

You're quite welcome. And, yup, the more you know.…

 

[Fnord]

Just remember the three properties of currency:

-It has to be accepted as a medium of exchange
-It has to be easily measured in amounts (and thus fungible)
-It has to have confidence as a store of value

Keep those things in mind and you can come up with any sort of crazy things. Ivory, seashells, colored beads, etc have all been used as currency before. Your fantasy world can use all sorts of things: dragon's teeth or scales, magical dust, jars full of faeries. . . whatever you want!

 

[Ravana]

You forgot one–albeit one that doesn't strictly require emphasis for most writers' purposes: the currency has to be more valuable as currency than it is as raw material. Which is why the U.S. penny is now mostly zinc, not copper, for instance… and why the nickel, dime and quarter are cupronickel alloys (and the nickel still requires a law to keep it from being melted down for its metal content–the metal is worth about 40% more than the coin is, at the moment). If the value of the raw material exceeds the currency value by any meaningful amount, it will vanish from the market as fast as it can be minted.

 

[Fnord]

Well, that's also in part because we have a fiat currency. In the "old days" gold coins were valuable not because they were minted necessarily, but because they were made of gold. It's also why prices tended to be a lot more stable (though exceptions to that existed, such as when the Spanish Empire plundered the new world of gold because they mistaken assumed that gold itself is what people wanted as opposed to what gold *bought*). That's why all those commodities had a store of value: even if the nominal value (i.e. the value printed on the coin) was fixed, since gold was actually valuable you could shove a bunch of the coins away and they'd still be worth something. Paper money as we use globally isn't quite as reliable because money can be valuable, but cotton-fiber paper itself is pretty worthless. This was most evident during the hyperinflation of Weimar-era Germany when workers were paid with wheelbarrowfuls of paper deustchmarks (that lost value between the beginning of the day and the end of the day) and it was found to be more cost-effective to just burn the deustchmarks for fuel than to actually purchase fuel with them (which comes back around to your central point).

Fiat currency, therefore, will almost always be more valuable nominally than the actual stuff it's made from.

 

[JBryden88]

I like this topic BECAUSE of the fact that I've had issues with this. I've resorted to "copper/silver/gold" at the moment but as I revise certain things I'll definitely figure something out.

 

[Fnord]

The awesome thing about fantasy writing is that you can really just tinker with it how you please. The only elements that need to be realistic (if at all) are the things we already mentioned. Us niggling economics types might disapprove here and there, but we can shut our mouths if science nerds have to shut their mouths over obvious violations of physics and biology.

 

[Ravana]

I never shut my mouth about obvious violations of physics. I just point them out, to make sure that what the author is writing is what was intended.

Even when money was valuable in virtue of what it was made of, the coin still had to hold a higher currency value than the metal itself: otherwise, whoever was minting the coin was losing money in doing so. Melting down of specie has been a common problem throughout history, and there are innumerable examples of laws passed to prevent this. Particularly if the currency was ever debased (as most were, eventually), older coins would be bought up and melted down. The government itself might do this… would be wise to, in fact, since what they put back out would represent a profit… at least until people realized the currency had been debased and inflation set in.

The biggest advantage of coins made of precious metals isn't so much that they retain a value based on what they're made of (though this is a big help); the advantage is that they are small. Wheat would retain its value just as well (assuming it was stored properly to prevent spoilage), possibly even better, since no matter how great the demand for gold is, most people will prefer eating if it comes down to making a choice (as you said, it's what the money buys that makes it valuable)… but it's awfully hard to fit any economically useful amount of wheat in your wallet. Coins are also far easier to standardize, in size, weight, and purity–which is why other small, high-demand items such as gemstones never caught on as currency. If you create a world in which rubies are always the same color and clarity, and can be readily cut into flawless specimens of exactly the same weight, they'd make an awesome trade currency.

A similar (though in some ways inverted) reason is also why iron never caught on as currency: no matter what value you might try to assign to it as a coin, it's just plain too useful as a metal, and there was never enough of it around. Unless your ability to produce iron approaches that of the industrial era, you'd never "waste" it on coinage–there are too many other things you'd want it for. So here, the value of the material has no connection to an "absolute" value, as with gold or silver (I'm sure that's not the right term, it's just the one that came to mind)–there were a few fleeting moments in history when iron was indeed "worth its weight in gold," but those passed quickly. The utility of the material would have kept it from being used as coinage. Gold, on the other hand, was useless. (Silver was even worse, since it tarnished: for any practical application, pewter would have been superior. Oddly, however, the two never approached one another in value.…)

So that might be a good way to determine what might make good currency, if you're trying to invent new ones: combine rare, shiny, and utterly lacking in practical applications–you're good to go.