Gold is a pain in the ass, Part 3

Let’s say the party had a magical bag of holding to hand. The party get the loot home, and they are trying to split it up. How many coins are we dealing with here?

Strap in, folks, more calculations ahead.

Just how big are these coins? Pirates of the Caribbean/Twoflower monstrosities, or something more manageable, like, say, a round pound coin?

We’re going to need to know to work out how many are in this chest, and the diligent writer is going to need to know how big a chest needs to be to hold the amount they have in mind.

Volume of a cylinder. Mmm, let’s see. You can get out a pen and paper and crank the numbers yourself, or you can use an online calculator for the volume of cylinders.

Let’s do the round UK pound coin. I used the Aussie $2 coin, which is very similar. But let’s go with your coin—and I do mean round coin. I’m not talking about the new stupid thing with twelve bloody sides. The volume of a dodecagon, nope. I’m just not doing it. Round. We’re doing round here today.

Your old pound coin was 22.5mm in diameter and 3.15mm thick. For the Liberians, that’s 0.8858267717 by 0.124015748 inches. I know how you like fractions, though, so have fun working those two out in your own time.

1252.46 cubic mm. Divide that by a million, and you’ve got the volume in litres.

0.00125246 litres or 1 divided by this number = 798 coins in a litre, or 72 times 798 = 57,456 if they took up all the space in the chest. I’m gonna say they take up 80% and thus, there is the absolute fortune of 0.8 times 57456 = around 46,000 coins, or on grull, 46 million bucks worth. Now, that’s worth fighting a dragon for. Might be a bit too much. Maybe a smaller chest is in order, or it’s not all gold?

Before we knee-jerk into just making bigger coins, let’s work out how much each gold coin weighs. 0.00125246 litres times 19.32 = 0.0241 kilos each, or 24.1 grams. Or to put it another way, there are 41.5 gold coins this size in a kilo. For the record, your old pound coin weighed 9.5 grams.

For those who haven’t fallen asleep yet, here’s why this matters.

If my next bank job goes as planned, I’ll be stuffing a million bucks of $100 notes into a backpack and running away, weighed down with a ten-kilo load, and I’ll be changing my location to a non-extradition country, not rotting in gaol. Wish me luck.

I weigh 85kg, not all of which is fat, and a hiking pack shouldn’t weigh more than 25% of my body weight, or 21 kilos. With a pack like that, I’m going to struggle to jog, much less run, and for this heist, I need to be able to run, so my heist is limited to a million bucks.

A million bucks is 1000 small gold coins on Grull, which means a thief there would have 24.1 kilos in their pack if they made off with this much, and even the fat guards aren’t going to have much trouble chasing them down. If he’s a 50-kilo goblin, he’s going to struggle to get the pack on, much less get away wearing it.

Thus, small, valuable coins or small, unexciting heists.

Still, don’t get greedy, thief; limit your take to 415 coins. If you’re a goblin, limit it to 244, and you’ll be able to run away. You will not be doing acrobatics, and you won’t be running far. Doubt me? Try it. Trust me, it will count as your cardio day.

Imagine how bad it would be if the coins were the massive things Jack Sparrow was after? No. If you’re dealing with coins like that, get a sapient pearwood chest before you decide to leave the Counterweight Continent. Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE was no fool.

Conclusion

Gold is a pain in the ass. Here is my advice on how to get a handle on it.

• Use small coins and do the math.
• Work out what one buys, and make it a lot.
• Work out how much everyone earns, so you know what they’re willing to do to get hold of it, and just how bad your social strata is.
• Know how much their loot weighs so they don’t break physics doing impossible stuff while carrying it.

Now, I just know some of you are thinking that using gems is the answer. Tread carefully. The Hope Diamond is almost small enough to swallow and is worth around 250 million US dollars. Even uncut diamonds are incredibly valuable, with a recent heist of just 4 kilos of them valued at 80 million dollars, because De Beers fixes the price with its monopoly. Gems also take skill to value, and are a pain to fence.

But, hey, who’s to say they’re not far more common in your world, and gemology is a skill many possess? Or get creative with the types of crystals and gems traded. An uncut peridot might have been valued and magically marked by the king’s magicians, and it buys a round of drinks.

Of course, the list of things that have been historically used as currency is almost endless (and fascinating), but gold—good old gold—that is something everybody values. They always have, and even if we start mining asteroids or the US dumps its gold for Bitcoin, and then dumps that to help with its crippling debt, bulldozing its ephemeral value as they go, they will continue to do so.

Diamonds aren’t forever; gold is.

As I told Jake, I have just one rule about made-up rules. If you make one, stick to it. Otherwise, go nuts.

Happy world building folks.