Re: USAGE: Currencies and -s

> Date:         Fri, 1 Sep 2000 00:07:57 -0400
> From:         Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
> On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >Raymond Brown wrote:
> >> But the trouble with gold coinage is that if inflation weakens the pound,
> >> the coin becomes worth more than its face value!
> >
> >That seems really odd to have a coin whose value changes.
>
> Not strange at all. We did it all the time, in those days. Same
> phenomenon happened when US banks issued currency (value decreased
> in proportion to distance from issuing city); and when the CSA was
> alive and kicking (I have an exchange rate chart of CS to US dollars).
I think it was quite common all over Europe. In Denmark from the
fifteenth to the early nineteenth century, there was a double standard
--- specie and curant. Specie was used for much the same as the
British guinea, and had to be paid in silver thaler/dollars/daler.
These coins were supposed to actually hold their value in metal, and
were used internationally as well.

(If one country started minting thalers with too little silver, people
would just start using the ones from the next country over, or accept
them at below face value).

Curant was what you bought your vittles with. Made up of smaller
coins, shillings and down, which never had even remotely the metal
value they went for. People used daler curant as a money of account
--- twelve penning to the skilling, sixteen skilling to the mark, six
mark to the daler --- but its value fluctuated relative to the daler
specie according to how much they trusted the current king and/or his
ministers. (In good times, about 100 skilling curant to one daler
specie --- in bad times many more).

> >> The Florin was introduced by them as a tenth of a
> >> pound which, of course, it was as it was worth 2 shillings.  There was,
> >> apparently, a limited amount of dimes (1/10 of a Florin) and cents (1/100
> >> of a Florin) minted, but never issued as the Victorian decimalization was
> >> never implemented.
> >
> >So, the "cent" would've been 1/1000 of a pound?
> >
> >Do you, or does anyone else on the list, know of a good website about
> >the old British money, and the origins of those coins, and other
> >countries' as well?  I'd like to get some ideas for con-monetary
> >systems.
>
> See www.tclayton.demon.co.uk/coins.html and also .../metals.html
> Mr Tony Clayton is extremely knowledgeable in British money, and
> is an all around good chap.
The oldest monetary units in northern Europe seem to have been one
roman ounce of gold --- uncia aureus,