Gold Pieces for Credits
- Thread starter Tom Kalbfus
- Start date
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Well you know the American one dollar coin is gold colored, that gold color is achieved by mixing certain metals together, if what your saying is true then a one dollar coin ought to be worth just as much for astetic reasons as an actual gold coin of that same size, and "fools gold", Iron Pyrite, wouldn't just be for fools then!simonh said:
F33D said:
Most likely on the TML, but similar conversations have popped up on the more recently common discussion boards. I know it floated through Gurps-net and its successor forum at Steve Jackson Games. And in all probability it floated through X-Boat while it still existed, but as I recall lots of the rules/background discussion there were about how badly TNE sucked, while the TML was doing silly things with FF&S....
Infojunky said:
Oh, god. I remember the TNE crap continuous for quite a while. I DO really want to know about extant boards. Just to be able to glean ideas from. Will made CotI uninhabitable years ago so that's out. I checked back a week or so ago just to see him berate and threaten some poor soul for offering help on a programming problem he was having.
F33D said:
The Gurps Traveller board has been fairly active through the years, but it helps to speak Gurps there. Then there are the various CT boards on Yahoo, which have all pretty much gone quiet. I know I am missing a bunch, I lost a lot with a prolonged stay in the hospital coupled with the death of both my mail machine and my personal domain, one of those mangled years. The COTI board is useful, ans long as one remembers that one is treading amongst trolls and grumpy grognards. Plus all the other little niches that still exist in the wild wooley corners of the web.
Infojunky said:
I remember the old Yahoo boards. GURPS I don't speak. I knew of more pre 2002 when I lost track of stuff due to life. Sorry to hear about that type of illness. I occasionally read CotI but lost my log on years ago. Thankful of the holes in the board that allow one to read anyway.
Thanks
Both Zhodani Base and Freelance Traveller have aggregated a lot of websites over the years as well.
Tom Kalbfus said:
Come on, you're just not even trying now. Actual high-carat gold is easily distinguishable from cheap gold-coloured alloys, and it is a lot prettier. Also you're also arbitrarily siezing on my 'aesthetic' comment and deliberately ignoring the historical reasons side of the argument. Picking on a single point out of context and pretending it as the only argument in qustion is a pretty low tactic.
Lots of things have real aesthetic value and it's a perfectly valid reason for a thing to be valuable. Why do you think gold has value? I think it's for the same reason as anythign else. People will surrender other goods and stores of value, such as currency, in order to obtain it. That's the reason anything has value. If people chose not to do that, gold would become valueless, or at least less valuable. As has been pointed out, in mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest, silver was considered far more valuable than gold. The value of either is mainly a cultural issue. To explain why you think gold has some special form of value that distinguish it from other things (if that's what you're arguing), you need to explain what that form of value is, why gold has it and why other things don't.
Take the example of someone dying of thirst in a desert with no apparent hope of rescue. The person meets a signle stranger. They are offered a bottle of water or a gold bar. Which do they take? The value you place on things relative to each other are contingent on the circumstances. There is no true universal measure or store of value.
As for 'making lead', it's a fundamental element not a chemical compound. Some human manufactured materials such as paint and petrol have hsitiocally had lead added to them, which has resulted in it being released into the environment, but we didn't manufacture that lead, it was mined from the ground. The only way to make genuinely new atoms of lead from other elements is either through nuclear fusion or nuclear fission, just like any other element. All the atoms of lead on earth, except for very small quantities created in particle accelerators or nuclear reactions, were created by nuclear fusion in stars.
Simon Hibbs
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
But apparently there is a lot more lead than gold, so I have to infer that the circumstances leading to lead production are a lot more common than those leading to the production of gold, thus gold is harder to make than lead. Also you know why gold is yellow? It is because the electrons in its outer shell are moving close to the speed of light, the light reflected off of them is red-shifted so instead of the silver color that is predicted we get gold.
Tom Kalbfus said:
I'm not sure what your point is. One of the factors leading to gold's value is it's relative scarcity. that's true. All other things being equal, a thing that is scarce will be more valuable than a thing that isn't.
It terms of 'making lead', or 'making gold', both are extracted from metal compounds found in ores. Gold is denser than lead and also about one third less abundant in absolute terms, so it's much less common at the earth's surface.
The reasons why things reflect light or are the colour they are is an interesting subject. Gold isn't unique in it's optical characteristics though. Many other metals exhibit similar effects, but it just so happens that their reflected light falls outside our visual reception range while gold's falls right within it in a particularly pleasing manner. Other species with different optical reception characteristics would see things differently.
Simon Hibbs
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Flowers are pretty too. Platinum is a rare metal, about as rare as gold if truth be told, one thing about platinum is that it is very difficult to work with, it has a high melting point, and it is a grey metal just like silver and iron, only heavier. if someone was wearing a platinum ring, you probably wouldn't know it unless he told you it was made of platinum. Platinum is still expensive though, it is used in hydrogen fuel cells and catalytic converters. it's inertness is what makes it useful. For example when used in fuel cells, the oxygen that combines with hydrogen to make electricity and water, would also combine with a metal that could oxidize such s iron or copper, so platinum is useful in this.simonh said:
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
As scarce as platinum is, it's never actually been a standard for a currency as gold and silver has. It has value more as a commodity and its high value is both scarcity and usefulness to promote demand.
In Traveller, gold seems to also fall in the realm of commodity than a currency standard. I'm sure somewhere there are planets that use gold, silver, platinum or vials of mercury as money because of scarcity and a particular local desire for the material.
In Traveller, gold seems to also fall in the realm of commodity than a currency standard. I'm sure somewhere there are planets that use gold, silver, platinum or vials of mercury as money because of scarcity and a particular local desire for the material.
Reynard said:
In the 3I there is no scarcity of gold unless it is outlawed on a particular world. Otherwise, it is as common as steel or lead. Since it is so common there would be no reason to use it as a currency standard. It would be like using aluminum as a currency standard... As it does exist as a listed, very cheap commodity means that it is used by industries somehow.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
If you're going to get technical, ALL precious metals are only available on trade codes Asteroid, Desert, Ice capped and Fluid worlds. Basic ores and Raw materials, which steel is, are available at all trade codes. That means precious metals are a scarcity with a value ten times greater that steel and fifty times greater than lead. yes, they make a much better currency.
Reynard said:
No. The PRICE and volume measurement for sale tells whether or not it is scarce. The price & volume says that SO much is available on the market that it is as common as steel and it.
I REALLY don't have time to fill in your missing elementary school level logic lessons. Future lessons will only occur if you pay men my usual rate of $200/hour for business consultation.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
Go read the book, for the first time. Precious metals, including gold is 50,000 while basic ores is 1,000 and basic raw materials is 5,000. Those are the base comparative prices which reflect many variable including scarcity. Purchase and Sale DMs are regular modifiers to that value for supply and demand but not a full measure of scarcity. Stop making things up to win all your arguments.
Reynard said:
According to Mongoose Merchant Prince the base price for Aluminium is Cr 5,00 and for gold and other 'precious metals' (the term it uses) is Cr 75,000 so gold is 15 times more expensive. That's actualy not a lot in the grand scheme of things. How authoritative that is compared to other published 3rd Imperium sources is a matter of opinion
The current spot price of Aluminium in bulk is apparently about $2k per metric ton, while for gold it's a little under $40k per kg, or $4m per ton, or 2,000 times more expensive.
That the relative price of precious metals in the 3i is lower than nowadays shouldn't be too surprising, after all they have access to rich metal deposits in asteroid belts. Most of the heavy metals on earth sank to the core, so the surface rocks are poor is heavy metals. No such process has been applied to the asteroids, hence some companies are even planning on capturing an asteroid and mining it for platinum. Why platinum and not gold? mainly because Platinum is actualy useful as an industrial material, so it's price will hold up better if there is a sudden large new supply on the market. If the supply of gold suddenly increased, the price would collapse because there's no economic demand for it to consume stocks and ballance out the supply.
One thing to note about these prices in Merchant Prince is that they are the price for a basket of goods, not a specific good. No price is given for gold, instead a price is given for 'precious metals' and Gold/Osmium/Iridium are given as examples. That provides a bit of leeway for GMs. Not a lot though. If the specific price for gold was much higher, you'd expect it to be listed alongside Platinum and Rhodium at Cr 100k.
BTW, one strike against the 'gold is manufactured cheaply in particle accelerators' theory, is that metal ores are listed as commodities and gold ore is among the most valuable. In fact it's more valuable than refined Aluminium. Hopefully that means Asteroid miners, and anyone owning the beltstrike supplement, can breathe a sigh of relief that they're not being pushed into irrelevancy any time soon.
Simon Hibbs
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Golden bathroom fittings and a throne are within reach.
simonh said:Reynard said:
According to Mongoose Merchant Prince the base price for Aluminium is Cr 5,00 and for gold and other 'precious metals' (the term it uses) is Cr 75,000 so gold is 15 times more expensive. That's actualy not a lot in the grand scheme of things. How authoritative that is compared to other published 3rd Imperium sources is a matter of opinion
The current spot price of Aluminium in bulk is apparently about $2k per metric ton, while for gold it's a little under $40k per kg, or $4m per ton, or 2,000 times more expensive.
That the relative price of precious metals in the 3i is lower than nowadays shouldn't be too surprising, after all they have access to rich metal deposits in asteroid belts. Most of the heavy metals on earth sank to the core, so the surface rocks are poor is heavy metals. No such process has been applied to the asteroids, hence some companies are even planning on capturing an asteroid and mining it for platinum. Why platinum and not gold? mainly because Platinum is actualy useful as an industrial material, so it's price will hold up better if there is a sudden large new supply on the market. If the supply of gold suddenly increased, the price would collapse because there's no economic demand for it to consume stocks and ballance out the supply.
One thing to note about these prices in Merchant Prince is that they are the price for a basket of goods, not a specific good. No price is given for gold, instead a price is given for 'precious metals' and Gold/Osmium/Iridium are given as examples. That provides a bit of leeway for GMs. Not a lot though. If the specific price for gold was much higher, you'd expect it to be listed alongside Platinum and Rhodium at Cr 100k.
BTW, one strike against the 'gold is manufactured cheaply in particle accelerators' theory, is that metal ores are listed as commodities and gold ore is among the most valuable. In fact it's more valuable than refined Aluminium. Hopefully that means Asteroid miners, and anyone owning the beltstrike supplement, can breathe a sigh of relief that they're not being pushed into irrelevancy any time soon.
Simon Hibbs
Interesting data and analysis. Yes, it would mean that in the 3I they find a hell of lot more gold on those other "World" types than we can get to on Earth. Scrap the manufactured gold theory.