The Canadian government recently announced that they won't be making pennies any more (thus joining other countries such as New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Sweden, etc. who have gotten rid of their equivalents).
And thus we have a very nice, new example of a "money of account": for example, balances in bank account or credit card statements will still be shown accurate to the cents-place. But there won't be any physical representation of that value -- no coins or notes that you can carry around or hand off to someone else in that value.
Just like how this is true: Shillings and pounds were not coins!
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I don't know much about medieval history but how, exactly did people do large transactions without money? Say you are buying 20 sheep from a herdsman for sale in a city.
ReplyDeleteI do know that romans (and greeks) had coins in multiple metals and multiple denominations. Since in D&D you are supposedly finding hoards of such ancient coinage, D&D's money system isn't too much of a stretch.
Fair question -- They had coins, but the denominations weren't shillings or pounds.
ReplyDeleteImagine Canada in a few years: you can buy something for 50 cents, but there's no "cent" coin. What you hand over is 2 Quarters (or something).
Example from medieval Europe: say you want to buy a sheep that costs 1 shilling, but there's no "shilling" coin. Probably what you hand over is 3 Groats (silver coin worth 1/3 shilling).
(Or see link in main post to prior discussions.)