Wilem had been acting bored since they arrived in Unster. “Don’t do this.” “Don’t do that.” “Don’t do the other thing.” His two taller companions had drilled into him all the things he shouldn’t do in this city. All these years together and they still treated him like a little kid instead of the professional that he was. It wasn’t his fault things accidentally fell into his possession, it was the curse of the ublilin as his mother always said.

No matter how bored he looked or how long he was keeping up the act his companions were doing an unfortunately amazing job of watching him like a hawk. He was getting quite bored of the whole game as they entered the harbor market. Actually he was getting quite bored with this white and green city! All these gnomes, halflings, and others seemed to be flitting about the city and absolutely no games were afoot. He hadn’t seen a single pick pocket and this was supposed to be some exciting city... What was wrong with these people?

The local constabulary seemed to be running about in almost jokester costumes pretending to be armor while lugging around pretty looking sticks. A few did have spears that were also pretty to look at, but in either case he would be surprised if the sticks didn’t break on first contact with the enemy.

The three of them had made their way through the harbor market down closer to the harbor when he noticed Vance setting down his two massive sacks of gear. Apparently they were finally wherever they were going and it was time for him to get to work.

The almost six foot tall mass of man felt naked without his armor on. He wasn’t sure if the short ublilin thief standing next to him made him feel safer or not. The two massive bags at the paladin’s feet contained his arms and armor, but did nothing to make him worry less. This crazy city seemed to have delusional people running around. He couldn’t grasp how not seeing weapons or armor would make people safer. The town guard patrolled the streets with light armor and large sticks, but the outer alabaster wall supposedly had real gear. At the very least they kept the alligators on the far side of the river away from the residents.

His two shorter companions seemed to be annoying the merchants trying to close up their stalls in the harbor market for the night. Dove, the taller of the shorties and the oldest of the group, had insisted they “camp out” in the harbor market. It was just another annoyance on top of a list of other annoyances with this place, but the illyar’s argument lined up with part of why they were there. She needed a place to play her harp and talk with other travellers.

He rubbed at his neck as his cool blue eyes scanned the crowded harbor market. Merchants were shewing off final customers of the day as they tried packing up their carts and baskets to clean out their stalls. He noted a younger elfin traveller plop his pack on the ground outside a nearby stall, a bored look on his face as he waited for the day’s merchant to clear out. He turned to get Dove’s attention.

Dove slapped the ublilin’s hand and yanked his hair.

“Ouch!” Wilem cried.

“Don’t think about it,” she replied tersely.

“I was going to ask her how much!”

“Likely,” she retorted. Dove noticed Vance trying to get her attention and looked where he was indicating. The indicated was a young elfen male dressed straight out of the Fae military, an odd site outside the Fae Kingdom. She turned back to Wilem, “behave, I need to introduce myself to someone.” She pulled out her harp and started to strum it as she hummed, trying to think of a tune he might recognize. She settled her mind on a tune and set her course toward him. Strumming and singing she went expecting to see a smile of recognition on his face.

His bored expression flashed with realization as she got closer, and soured.

“Stop,” he stated. “I’ve no coin for that tune.”

The strumming of the harp and the soft siren call flowing from her lips ended suddenly. “I haven’t seen the uniform since the last time I was in the Fae Kingdom and I thought you’d appreciate the song.”

“I fulfilled my mandate and now I’m away from there. Hopefully never to return.”

Now she thought she knew what was off about the elfen man. “A half and they treated you like a bastard?”

“Aye, a bastard,” he replied with frustration.

“Not all elfin kind will treat you that way,” she tried to cheer him up.

“Then they don’t know my father.”

She was taken aback by this as why should that matter? “You are right. I don’t know him. I am Dove,” she waved in the direction of her companions. “And those two louts are currently my travelling companions.”

“I am Kaylith. Why though are you assaulting me with a song?”

“Besides waiting for another companion we’re also collecting news for our patron. We’ll be heading over the mountains towards the Fae Kingdom so any news on what we can expect would be useful.”

“Well, I’m almost three weeks out from there. I carried an ambush report to Kurdwood and then forwarded it to here.”

“An ambush report?”

“Yes, unfortunately I don’t know much of the details. A Fae encampment was ambushed and the elfs apparently routed the goblinoid raiders. The remains point to raiders rather than an actual military band.”

“I assume you’re planning to enjoy the night here in the harbor market?” He nodded. “You should join us for dinner and share in some tales from the road. We’ll play some music and sing... Well, better songs.”

“I’m sorry for my bad reaction. I’d appreciate the diversion. Once I’m moved in for the night I’ll make my way over.”

“See that you do or I may have to send the ublilin over.”

“The who?”

“Wilem, the shorter of the two. I’d try to send Vance as intimidation, but he’s been paranoid without his arms and armor.”

“Hah, something we have in common then. Fine, for sure I’ll be by, at least to laugh at the bear of a man.”

Later as the three sat around their campfire and Vance was finishing up the tale of a recent exploit Wilem tilted his head, “do I hear our guest?”

“Don’t scare him off, you little fiend,” warned Dove.

The younger half elfen appeared around the stall and they waved him in to sit at their fire. His camp bowl appeared in his hands and Wilem reached to fill it. Kaylith warily let the ublilin take the bowl. “So you’re heading over towards the Fae Kingdom?” Kaylith queried as he closely watched as Wilem filled and returned his bowl.

“We’re heading to meet friends in Kurdwood and then we’re to patrol down the Barntham River. There are rumors of dark things running in the woods. Any recent tales or stories, no matter how strange, would be useful,” responded Vance as Dove lightly plucked her harp and hummed distractedly.

Kaylith took his meaning, “over the last couple of years we’ve been getting an increase in goblinoid raids, just orcs and goblins mostly. Not much in consistent tribal markings so leadership assumed displacement or abandonment.”

Dove chimed in, “as if something else is pushing them out of their roaming grounds.”

“Exactly,” stated Kaylith. “Mostly smaller groups and easily taken care of. And then, the ambush.”

“Ambush?” Wilem perked up.

“Various elfen units were collecting in a camp to the north and west of Kurdwood, a small army to be sure. I had been sent to dig out along the outer way. I had started a good hole when I noticed something, not really sure what. Next I knew I was staring down a hobgoblin with naught, but my shovel and a shout. I guess I got the shovel up fast enough to block his blow as next I knew I woke up packed nice and neat in my hole with a hobgoblin as a blanket.”

Dove stopped plucking and looked a dead stare at him, “invisibility? How and where would they get that?”

“Apparently it wasn’t just the one as they got my entire unit, but not before they plugged my assailant full of arrows.”

“Sorry for the loss,” piped Vance.

“No love lost.”

“Someone so young shouldn’t be so cynical,” retorted Dove.

“They taught me things true, but were at the end of a list of reasons for leaving. I cleaned up the rest of the camp pulling out other survivors as I waited to find out who won. I assume we did as the elf lord in charge dismissed me from service by having me deliver a letter recounting the mess.”

“I hope Kevus has ideas for dealing with that,” sighed Vance.

Wilem chuckled, “we could cover camp with trip wire and bells like we did that one time.”

Vance humphed, “I was hoping to forget that.”

Wilem laughed and Dove rolled her eyes. Kaylith asked and the night delved into a story of an old adventure.

Short version: Alternate game monetary system based on the Spanish dollar (aka pieces of eight) or rather the United States 90% silver coinage starting at Morgan and Peace dollars working all the way down to the copper penny. This easily handles everything from gold pieces all the way down to copper pieces in the game monetary scale. Let’s start at the high end & work our way down.

Replace the platinum piece with a gold half eagle $5 coin (8.359 grams, 1/4 the size of the $20 Saint Gaudens double eagle). Replace the gold piece with a silver coin that could look like a Spanish silver dollar or a Morgan or Peace silver dollar (26.7 grams). Replace the electrum piece with a Barber, Walking Liberty, Franklin, or JFK like half-dollar (12.5 grams). Replace the silver piece with a Barber, Winged Liberty (aka Mercury), or Roosevelt 90% silver dime (or disme at 2.5 grams). The copper piece could remain copper, but the United States copper alloy pennies, both brass and bronze, weigh in at 3.11 grams. Quarters would be a new spot between electrum and silver pieces worth 25 copper pieces, use them or not.

Half-dollars (12.5 grams), quarters (6.25 grams), and dimes (2.5 grams) all weigh in at 0.25 grams per one cent of value and making pennies and dollars fit into this weight dynamic you could simply multiply your penny weight value by 0.25 grams or your fractionalized gold piece total weight by 25 grams. Actual gold coins at the platinum piece level (so above the normal gold piece or gp) you could multiply by 8 grams per platinum piece value.

Many different editions of game systems want players to keep track of each type of coin they have collected and assume all the coins weigh exactly the same amount, 50 coins per pound. This kind of makes me think of 1 troy ounce bars and rounds in modern life, but if you make your way down to your local coin shop you’ll soon discover there’s a massive difference in value between that gold, silver, and copper. Even more so with all the economic shenanigans currently going on. Various gaming groups I’ve been a part of over time joked about buying gold and silver pieces. When the gold colored Sacagawea dollars (not actually gold) came out in 2000 we joked about finding gold pieces.

The combination of a couple of things going on and trying to write a book has me looking at monetary systems again. Remember the Ferengi gold-pressed latinum slips or strips? I think something akin to the Goldbacks and Silverbacks would actually work... But that would be modern or futuristic. For this article I want to look back into history and give some ideas for an alternate medieval fantasy monetary system.

For decades people have been complaining back and forth about the money system in this game or that game. The weights don’t make sense. The value doesn’t match. Lots of valid complaints for wanting something different.

Most campaigns I’ve been a part of the money was mostly a system of accounting running in the background and just a question of weight. For a few games with weird money systems it was interesting to begin with and then it got stuck in the minutiae of money changers when everybody just wanted to go on an adventure. There’s a lot of campaigns where players are running around with dragon hoards of gold and gold no longer has any meaning.

I wanted to come up with a bit more realistic metal monetary system with some basis in reality that I can simply slip into the existing gaming monetary system. I’ve been digging through various info I can find online about Roman coins and others. Something I noticed about Roman coins is that a good portion of them across the middle values were silver.

I remember somehow associating a gold piece for a dollar and then it just easily flowed down fractionally with copper pieces being United States one cent pieces (aka a penny). I’m sure I’m not the only person who decimalized it similarly. The part where it never clicked with weights though was because I was always looking at the paper currency and that really doesn’t equate very well to metals.

Back in March I finally picked up a less expensive circulated $20 Saint Gaudens double eagle to include with my 90% silver coins I’ve been using to educate people on older coins and their value. That’s a twenty dollar coin sitting amongst twenty Morgan dollars. After all these years something finally clicked that the paper currency never allowed for.

Talking with older generations about what they could get with our (United States) 90% silver coins I get different stories like a gallon of gas only cost a quarter. Depending where you are in the country today you should be able to take a 90% silver quarter to a coin shop and get enough cash to pay for a gallon of gas. My mom has stated she bought a dozen eggs for a quarter, but I wonder if it was two dozen? That same 90% silver quarter converted to cash could pay for one or two dozen eggs depending on type and brand. I may even be able to get three dozen depending on where I am in the country.

Eggs are something that did exist in medieval times and usually exists in several game systems pricing sheets. 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook for one system lists an egg or fresh vegetables at a cost of 1 copper piece. It also lists two dozen eggs at two silver pieces (20 copper pieces) and one hundred eggs at eight silver pieces (80 copper pieces). If we go back to 1 copper piece per egg and multiply by two dozen we end up with twenty four copper pieces, just 1 penny shy of a quarter. Hmm...

In 1497 AD, following monetary reform in the Spanish Empire, the Spanish dollar was first minted. It was worth eight Spanish reales, hence the name pieces of eight. It became so popular that it became the first international currency because of its uniformity. Other nations stamped their seal on it in order for it to be traded locally with their own currency. The Spanish dollar became the “gold standard”, pun intended, for silver coins and was the coin used as the standard for what the United States silver dollar should be in 1857. For more real world history on this I suggest looking at the Spanish Dollar on Wikipedia as it may give some historical ideas for campaign background.

So what about weight? I’m used to dealing with troy ounces for metals, but we need a smaller unit of measure and grams seem to work for that. Our target unit of weight for games tends to be the pound for those of us in the States. Those using other units of weight will probably have an easier time with this conversion.

There are 453.59 grams in a pound and a Morgan dollar, according to Wikipedia, is 26.73 grams which would allow for 16.969 Morgan’s per pound (double check below when I standardize & re-weight). So with some wear and tear maybe we say 17 Morgan or Peace dollars in a pound. If you want to go for a heavier weighted coin we could use a one troy ounce round as an example and at 14.5833 troy ounces per pound you could say 14-15 coins per pound. But these weights should be for newly minted coins hot off the press. After many years of circulation and clipping or shaving would make them weigh less.

Going back to the 50 coins per pound and looking again at 90% silver coins where does this put us? At 453.59 grams in a pound the coins would have to weigh an average of 9.0718 grams. The 90% silver quarters weigh in at 6.25 grams, too light. The 90% silver half-dollars weigh in at 12.5 grams, too heavy. The 90% silver dimes weigh 2.5 grams, but the modern dimes come in at 2.268 grams... So about four of the modern dimes is the weight we’re looking for as the weight for one of those 50 coins coming in around 9 grams.

Multiplying this 50 coins in a pound number by the four dimes we need for that average weight puts us at 200 coins. Taking the 453.59 grams divided by the 2.268 grams of the modern dime gives us 199.99559. Initially I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this, but figured it might be useful for someone else trying to math out some of this information. However, when I got to the end and rounded to 20 full size coins I ended up with 200 silver dimes per pound.

If the Morgan or Peace dollar takes the place of the gold piece, the 90% silver half-dollar (Barber, Walking Liberty, Franklin, or JFK) fit perfectly as the electrum piece, and the 90% silver dime (or disme as originally written in the Coin Act) is a 10th of the dollar and fits as the silver piece (which is a 10th of the gold piece). When we get down to the copper piece we can look at the United States’ copper coins. Nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel.

The first one cent coins were about 100% copper and heavy (13.4 grams and then 10.8 grams), then an 88% copper and 12% nickel (4.6 grams) version, and then we get to the 3.1 gram 95% copper pennies that most people have seen. Most of the 95% copper pennies were bronze (5% tin and zinc), but a two year stint after the war were brass or gilded metal (5% zinc). During World War II when both copper and nickel were needed for other things we ended up with steel pennies (2.7 grams) and 35% silver nickels (56% copper and 9% manganese). The current modern pennies are 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper with a weight of 2.5 grams.

Be aware that salt water will wear away the zinc in brass fairly quickly. This is why brass near the ocean is usually gilded with an overlay of copper or another metal to prevent the corrosion. The steel pennies had problems of their own, but it was a temporary stop gap for a year after which they melted them down as they were turned in.

Bouncing through all of these coins can we find a common weight? With the copper piece or penny being the lowest common denominator, let’s divide these weights down to their one cent value. The Morgan and Peace dollars come in at 0.2673 grams per cent. Half-dollars give us a weight of 0.25 grams per cent. Quarters at 6.25 grams give us a weight of 0.25 grams per cent. The dimes easily give us a cent weight of 0.25 grams. And the zinc penny gives us a weight of 2.5 grams.

Maybe we shave a bit off the Morgan and Peace dollars and rebalance them to be 0.25 grams per penny value so they weigh the same as the other silver coins? If we do that, then our gold piece dollar comes out at 25 grams allowing for 18.1436 “dollars” of silver per pound. This also means our dragon hoard of gold turns into a dragon hoard of silver

How then do we bring gold in? Gold is a much softer and denser metal and is usually mixed with copper or silver for stronger coins. The United States $20 Saint Gaudens double eagle weighs in at 33.436 grams. That’s 1.075 troy ounces, but there’s only 0.9675 troy ounces of gold in the coin. This makes it a 90% gold coin with the remaining 10% being copper. The UK gold coins in the above picture are one ounce of gold, 1/4 ounce of gold, and 1/10 ounce of gold. The smaller bar and round are one gram each. The jewelry piece I believe comes in at about 4 grams total, but only the three rocks are gold, the metal holding everything together is just colored to look gold.

If we go back to our game system monetary chart we see that a platinum piece is supposed to be worth five of the gold pieces. Since we are using a Morgan silver dollar as a gold piece we should be looking for a gold coin worth five dollars. This would line up with the United States half eagle gold coin which is 1/4 the weight of the double eagle Saint Gaudens coin making it about a quarter ounce of gold.

The above picture should give you an idea of the size difference between similarly weighted/sized coins between gold and silver. The Morgan and Peace dollar is 26.7 grams and the Saint Gaudens coin is 33.436 grams, a full 6.7 grams heavier. The 90% silver quarters are 6.25 grams while the 1/4 troy ounce gold coin on top of it is about 7.77 grams. The 90% silver dime is 2.5 grams while the 1/10 troy ounce gold coin on top of it is about 3.11 grams. The gold is heavier so a close to similar weight is going to be a smaller coin.

If we want to expand upon this and have a framework for coins of different sizes and weights beyond what the game system has we can keep with the dollar value framework. Looking at the value of the Morgan silver dollar and the $20 gold double eagle we have a value of 20 of the silver coins for 1 of the gold coins of the same size. If for some reason you want to do the same with copper we can look at the penny and dime are about the same size and weight so maybe you say it takes 10 copper coins to equal a silver of the same size. I’m not sure how many civilizations would have a coin about the size of a Morgan or Saint Gaudens that’s only worth a dime. Maybe if that civilization has massive amounts of copper, but little to no gold or silver?

We can keep track of the metal and the “gold piece” or “dollar value” (or the Morgan value, or your own name value). Say my civilization likes Crowns and Moons so they have gold crowns and silver moons. Base the silver moon the same as the Morgan silver dollar and it slides into the gold piece (1 gp) slot. They also mint a half-moon (1 ep or 2 sp), a quarter moon (25 cp or 2 sp and 5 cp), a moon disme (1 sp) as silver coins. Now they also have a gold crown (20 gp), half-crown (10 gp), quarter crown (5 gp or 1 pp), a crown disme (2 gp). They also have a pan (5 cp) and a dink (1 cp). They also tried a silver tiger (2 gp), but most natives don’t like it as they tend to use silver half-moons or smaller for groceries and shopping.

My base silver moon is 25 grams and my base gold crown is 25 grams. Using the above calculated weight for silver dollars per pound, every 18.1436 of silver moons weighs a pound. Likewise, every 362.872 (gp or silver moon value) of gold crowns weighs a pound.

Those numbers are a bit complex so let’s simplify and round up. Every 20 of the base coin weighs a pound. That means every 20 silver moons (that’s 20 gp) weighs a pound. Every 20 full gold crowns (or 400 gp of value) weighs a pound. Every 20 copper based coin that a dink is a 10th of would weigh a pound.

A dink (1 cp) is a 10th size of a copper coin that would be the same size as a Morgan, or in this case a silver moon. The copper coin the size of the silver moon would take 20 of the coin to weigh a pound so at a 10th it would take 200 of these coins to weigh a pound. The pan, if made only of copper, would essentially be a half size of the full copper coin only allowing for 40 per pound. If instead the pan was a mixed metal and more the size of a quarter you could have 80 per pound.

In this way a character could be carrying around 10 dinks; 4 pans; 10 moon dismes, 8 quarter moons, 10 half moons, 7 silver moons (total of 15 moons); and 2 quarter crowns, 3 half crown, and 1 crown (3 gold crowns) weighing a full pound. The total gold piece (gp) of value he’s carrying around would be (10 / 100) + ((4 x 5) / 100)+ 15 + (3 x 20) = 75.3gp. Or copper (cp) value to gold (gp) 10 + (4 x 5) + (15 x 100) + (3 x 2000) = 7,530 cp / 100 = 75.3 gp.

Now I have my currency based somewhat on old real money. Weights and values make a little bit more sense and there’s a bit of room to fit other metals in.

Electrum is just a naturally occurring instance of gold and silver together. In the modern world it’s just considered an alloy as some of the gold coins use silver, instead of copper, to make them more resistant to wear and tear. That second metal is what gives the gold coins their different hues.

Platinum and palladium are mostly industrial metals these days. Platinum coins were attempted by Spain in Spanish colonized America and later by the Russian Empire. Other countries including the United States and Britain attempted to make coins out of platinum as well. Counterfeiters used it to fake gold and silver coins. Platinum is a very hard metal and not very malleable, plus it tends to be confused for other metals like silver.

While most governments found the metal frustrating for coinage merchants actually preferred the platinum because the coins wouldn’t melt in fires. It wasn’t until over 100 years later that Russia started creating commemorative coins for the 1980 Summer Olympics that got other countries looking at minting coins in platinum again. Canada has a platinum Maple Leaf and Australia has a platinum Koala among them.

There are things I learned long ago, things I’ve recently learned, and things I’m currently trying to wrap my brain around that I get asked questions about. When I finally work through something and figure it out I assume I was just dumb and stupid for not having understood it before and everybody else just already knew. However, I keep coming across people who have never heard this tidbit or that tidbit of knowledge I discovered... from other people or from my own stupidity that smarter people avoided. I do not have all of the answers, in some cases I just have boards covering potholes to prevent stumbling over things that should be avoided.

 

I was going to start this with a hypothetical $1,000 USD in the bank, but I realized not everybody can grasp that just yet. Maybe I can start at $100 USD, but with younger generations, like my niece and nephew or younger kids, they may not have that yet either. I think it’s probably best to just start with a $10 bill. The irony of Hamilton.

What is money? It’s supposed to be a store of value. If I can buy a dozen eggs for a dollar or I can get items off the McD’s dollar value menu today I could get ten dozen eggs or ten items on the value menu. I should be able to keep that $10 bill in the bank and expect that I can still get that many eggs or that many dollar value menu items tomorrow. At least that seems to be the expectation?

 

Instead I head over to the store tomorrow and the dozen eggs or the item on the dollar menu is $1.10... Well ok, it's just a little bit more. The day after it’s $1.20, then $1.50, then $2, then $3, then $5. Wow, it must be getting really hard to find and dig up that dozen eggs or the dollar menu item because the scarcer a resource becomes the more the value goes up... right?

There are multiple reasons for this, but in this article I’m just going to touch on inflation. What is inflation and how does it affect our currency? People outside of the United States invest in Federal Reserve Notes (aka U.S. Dollars) because it's been a more stable currency than their own local currency. What does this mean? How does this work?

Most of the currencies in the world right now are fiat currencies, what many of us would call paper money. There are both pros and cons to this. One of the easy pros for carrying around paper currency is the weight. Imagine trying to carry around a pound or two of copper in order to pay for a burger at a fast food restaurant? How about showing up with one hundred troy ounces (almost seven pounds!) of silver to buy a used car?

In a previous article I pointed out how the United States fiat currency used to be linked directly to gold and silver. That is what actually gave the fiat currency value. Why is this important? Money represents a value of work in some way.

If we go back to ancient Roman currency, somebody had to mine the ore. Then someone refined the ore. Someone converted the refined ore into a coin. The value of the material and size of the coin also gave it value. The material money, made into coin, to be currency and easily spent. The coin had value outside of the realm because of the inherent value of the material. When Rome started reducing the amount of silver in their “silver” coins the coins became worth less and less. In some cases the original older coin had 94% silver content and the newer and newer coins ended up with 60% or less silver content allowing Rome to “print” more coins.

Now if we look at one of the most infamous fiat currencies, the German Weimar Republic’s mark, we might be able to learn something. In 1914 the exchange rate was about 4.2 marks per U.S. dollar and the government started borrowing money to fund their war effort. By 1918 the exchange rate was about 7.9 marks per U.S. dollar. What was worse was after the war they kept printing more and more marks without anything of value behind it. The printing got so bad that in order to not run out of ink they gave up trying to print both sides and only printed the one side. By the end of 1923 the exchange rate was 4,210,500,000,000 marks per U.S. dollar (copied from Wikipedia). That’s four trillion and some odd marks per dollar!

This problem is not relegated to only countries losing a massive world war. The Turkish lira is a recent currency I saw a video about on YouTube a couple of years ago. Stores had to keep changing their prices throughout the day as the value declined. People would get paid right before they would go on their lunch break and hope the currency kept its value long enough to buy lunch. Your afternoon shift would pay you more and hopefully you could buy dinner. The next morning your pay rate was even higher than the day before because the value had dropped even more. Most stores ended up posting prices in US dollar amounts and simply converted for lira on the fly.

 

Another country that has had problems with printing too much currency is Zimbabwe. They printed so much currency they’re famous for having the one hundred trillion dollar note. It was worthless, so they created a new currency and within a few years they were right back to having printed trillions of dollars of notes. They are now trying to grapple with a gold backed fiat currency.

When U.S. dollars were silver certificates (and even when they were backed by gold) they were limited to how many they could print based on how much gold and silver the U.S. government had. At a certain point in time the U.S. government removed the gold backing which left the 90% silver coins in the system. Then, in 1964, even the 90% silver coins were removed from the system.

If instead of looking at currency as a store of value you instead look at it as a product... Things start to change. When a product is scarce and in high demand in the marketplace, the value goes up. When a product is no longer scarce and is no longer in high demand, the value goes down. Even if the product is scarce, but nobody wants the product, the value will also go down.

 

Trying to comprehend the massiveness of what is going on is difficult so let’s break this down to be a bit more comprehendible. For every one hundred U.S. dollars ($100) currently in the system, whether physically printed or just a digit in your bank account, twenty dollars ($20) existed before the year 2020. That leaves the remaining eighty dollars ($80) in that one hundred ($100) was just created in the last four years… And they’re still creating more.

Mathematics show no forgiveness on the alter of truth.

I will end this here after giving a brief mention and warning about BRICS. BRICS originally stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but more and more countries are signing onto this international trade agreement. The original BRICS members make up about 30% of the world’s land surface and 45% of the world’s population. These countries were previously utilizing U.S. dollars which lessened the impact of inflation on U.S. citizens.

With these countries extricating themselves from the usage of U.S. dollars they are shipping the inflation back to the United States. The chickens are coming home to roost and dealing with the decades of inflation is going to be painful.