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How Big Are Medieval Gold Pieces?

How Big Are Medieval Gold Pieces?

Name: Enchanted
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Comments: When the DM awards you 200 gold pieces what size and weight are we talking about? Is a gold piece the same value and weight everywhere?

Pieces Gold Medieval Big How

I'm not like an expert on this or anything but they weren't big at all probably like pebble size or less than a penny that's why you can hold so many but gold is heavy so it mounts up when you have to carry that and all your gear.

How Big Are Medieval Gold Pieces? History & Civil Business Politics

I've seen roman coins, well replicas of them, and some of them are the same size as our modern coin currency so that should give you an idea.

Pieces Gold Medieval Big How

Gold coins then were a bit heavier than our modern coin I would be willing to bet. I'm no expert but I think they were made of actual gold which is a lot heavier than alloys or aluminum and such.

I have seen DM's put the weight on gold coins at 1lb per 10 coins though admittedly that is probably to heavy. I would put their weight at (internet search...) 40gold pieces equaling 1 pound.

Yes there are variants though as people would tend to scrape little shavings off of coins and after certain amount of coins have an extra gold coin. Also I imagine if you were good enough at alchemy and had the right tools you could take a pure gold coin and get 1 and a half or 2 out of it by mixing it with other less valuable metals.

Lastly coins size vary from nation to nation. So a gold coin from one land might be the size of a nickel were across the ocean they may be the size of a half dollar (standard size). That is a bit of a stretch though and I think for simpleness most all GM's will use the standard gold coin universally.

To answer your question simply they are the size of a U.S. half dollar and 40 of them together weigh 1 pound.

Edited: Oliron on 27th May, 2012 - 2:18am