Trade Bars

[Jak Nazryth]

My players are outside the Emperium, just rimward of the spindward marches, between Aslan and Emperial space. (Sorry but I'm having a brain fart.. Reft Sector?) Anyway, the area is home to non-aligned worlds, pirates, slavers, along with Emperial and Aslan ships. I have introduced "trade bars" similar to Gold-pressed Latinum from Star Trek, deep space nine. Since the region is surrounded by several "nations" I wanted to introduce something that was valuable and could be used as money by various people without having to switch back and forth between various forms of currency. There are many systems that may not have the ability to transfer once currency to the other, so while Emperial credits are still the norm, these trade bars are also accepted at face value, 100cr, 500cr, 1000cr bars etc...
Question. Does something like this already exist, and I simply haven't found it in the rules yet, and if not, what type of metal or substance would be a could candidate (besides gold pressed latinum)?

 

[rust]

I am not aware of any mention of something like trade bars
in any Third Imperium source, but I may well have missed it.

Two metals which could be used are Lanthanum (used for the
construction of jump drives) and Iridium (which seems to re-
place gold in the Third Imperium's culture, for example the
Emperor's throne is known as the Iridium Throne). A third pos-
sibility could be Zuchai Crystals, also used for the construction
of jump drives.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I remember some kind of a mention of trade bars in GURPS Traveller many moons ago.
I too was leaning toward Lanthanum, (used for jump grids I believe) since you can measure it's value per weight down to the milligram. But I honestly completely forgot about Iridium. Maybe Iridium pressed Lanthium? :wink:

 

[D2F]

On a more neutral note, you could also have the bars be made out of ruthenium or rhodium. They are both, universally rare, as they are amongs the last elements formed out of a dieing star, as well as platinum metals, preventing oxidation, a trait not too unimportant for a trade resource aimed at retaining value.

Just my 2ct, though.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

sheesh... just got over my brain fart.
My players are in the Trojan Reaches, pretty close to the boundaries of the Florian League.

Last game my players delivered a few scientist to a lab ship orbiting a small moon which was in fact a secret ancients dig site. The 2 plot hooks they are pursuing is to locate a lost experimental ship, piloted by the co-owner of Winters Corp, plus located the hidden base of the Dark Star crime syndicate. (Now they have 3 plot hooks)
It was on a research station when they first discovered these trade bars. Since the labship is in "free space" the scientists had a good amount of trade bars on board to pay for "hard to get items" normal currency couldn't buy.
This "wilderness" is ripe with people who would rather stay away from official forms of currency (particularly when converting from Alsan, to Florian (or other), to Emperium currency can be tracked and taxed) so trade bars have become just as acceptable as official money. Since Lanthanum has a specific value per gram, and extremely valuable, it's easy to use as money and virtually impossible to fake. Most of the trade bar "currency" production is controlled by the Dark Star syndicate. If they chose to go deeper into the Trojan Reaches, their newly acquired trade bars will come in handy.

 

[Mithras]

Strange isn't it? Trade like this goes way back, in the Bronze Age Mediterranean copper ingots as big as a seat cushion and cast in the shape of an ox-hide were a near universal currency from Greece to Egypt. The copper could be traded on or melted to be used for tools, weapons etc.

In iron age Britain, iron bars (roughly sword length) served a similar purpose, easily portable, valuable in themselves as a trade item, but able to be reforged as spearheads, tools, or a sword, for example.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Also many vikings used "chop silver", a long silver band usually wrapped around their wrists. The band had scored marks every centimeter or so. When they paid for something, they simply measured out the number of marks, then used a knife of axe to chop the correct number of segments. Since it was so easy to melt and score again, it became the standard currency.... or so I've read.

Don't forget salt!

 

[Hans Rancke]

Just use gold. According to Research Station Gamma (p. 38) it is worth Cr200 per ounce. That could be rounded off and could be an ounce ounce or an arvedupois ounce or a troy ounce so could be somewhere between Cr6450 and 7140 per kilo. The easisest is to just say Cr200 per ounce and make the trade bars an even number of ounces. Or make them a gold alloy that makes the bars come out at Cr200 for a 50g bar.


Hans

 

[renski]

200 Credits an ounce seems like a reasonable value. But The Merchant Prince trade tables say that gold is worth 75000 Credits per dTon.

gold has a density of 19.30 g per cm^3.
1 cubic metre = 1 000 000 cubic centimetres
1 dTon is 14 cubic meters

So, our 1 dton block of gold weights 14 * 1000000 * 19.3 = 270,200,000 grams.

A small 1 kg bar is therefore worth 1000 * (75000 / 270200000) = 0.277 credits! An ounce is worth 0.0064 Cr. It's practically worthless!

Maybe 75% of the volume of that is packaging or something, and it's worth more than that, but that's still pretty ridiculous.

Only at 0.0278% volume efficiency for it to be 75,000 Cr a dTon.
At 100% volume efficiency it would be ~2,340,000,000 Credits a dTon for 200 credits an ounce.

I suspect the value of commodities has been set so low so that you can't go around trading billions of credits of trade goods in a 100 dTon Scout.

Renski

 

[rust]

So, our 1 dton block of gold weights 14 * 1000000 * 19.3 = 270,200,000 grams.

Which is almost 60 % of the weight of a standard scout ship.
A good reason never to take a ship with a cargo hold full of
gold into the wilds, it would sink during ocean refuelling and
probably also into any surface except bedrock ... :wink:

 

[renski]

So, our 1 dton block of gold weights 14 * 1000000 * 19.3 = 270,200,000 grams.

Which is almost 60 % of the weight of a standard scout ship.
A good reason never to take a ship with a cargo hold full of
gold into the wilds, it would sink during ocean refuelling and
probably also into any surface except bedrock ... :wink:

Maybe that's the real limiting factor of loading gold onto your ship, not the volume, but the weight.

 

[Hans Rancke]

Only at 0.0278% volume efficiency for it to be 75,000 Cr a dTon.
At 100% volume efficiency it would be ~2,340,000,000 Credits a dTon for 200 credits an ounce.

Heh. We had similar deliberations when we worked out the value of dustspice. A lot of the volume wound up being special packaging.

Easiest fix is to say that Cr75,000 is for low-grade gold ore. Just why anyone would want to ship gold ore is another problem.

Which of the two contradicting statements are likeliest to be wrong? Perhaps an even better fix is to change the commodity to something other than gold or to change the volume of Cr75,000T worth of gold.

I suspect the value of commodities has been set so low so that you can't go around trading billions of credits of trade goods in a 100 dTon Scout.

Well, it's not very likely that any group of PCs could gather billions of credits worth of trade goods. I don't see the problem with making gold a referee-introduced commodity only.


Hans

 

[Dave Chase]

Some thing to consider is the minting process and what value that adds to the gold.

Gold (silver, copper, nickel, etc) has a real world value of X per ounce (pound) in it's raw form.
But put that into a bullion or coin form and the value of the mint is more than the actual raw form.

Now some mints are worth more because of dies or limited runs. In the future it most likely will be easier to forgery coins and bullion, specially the printing or press of the mint.

But maybe there is special materials that are added to make it either an alloy or coin material that would help eliminate (reduce) such forgery attempts.

I think that the raw form of the material would be easier to bater/trade if you are visiting many different locations, say in the fringe or less civilized areas of space.
And then the coin/bullion would be more desirable by merchants in the more frequent/dense areas of civilization.

Dave Chase

 

[Hopeless]

Just a thought but wouldn't the price of said item be based on how available it was?

So gold in a system with way too much gold deposits wouldn't offer as good a price as say a place where such precious metals was in poor supply so that scout could carry say a few tons of gold from the gold rich place for say half the usual value and sell it at the system where its all bar non-existant for maybe as much as twice the normal value...

Trade bars on the other hand would be dependant on who recognises them as legal tender after all, all it takes is for someone in charge to declare that particular type of trade bar as illegal tender and confiscate it before having it shipped out for safe "disposal" (and by safe i mean they sell it on somewhere else!) and thats if they're kiind enough not to imprison or impound the ship and crew caught carrying these items.

Sorry went a little off tangent there, would something everyone would want or use ala the barter system be more appropriate?

Say cattle ala Firefly for example, in the pilot episode they recovered some supplies from that shipwreck that unfortunately had the Alliance sigil on them but that would be another sort of trade albeit difficult to unload of course.

What would you consider a suitable trade bar?

Other than Lanthanum or Iridium I mean.

 

[rust]

Just a thought but wouldn't the price of said item be based on how available it was?

Yes, and also whether there is any use for it. For example, in my
water world colony setting the colonists have no local source of
gold, but they also have no use for this metal - a gold trade bar
would consist of an extremely rare and at the same time comple-
tely useless stuff. Its actual local value would be zero, and I very
much doubt that it would be accepted as payment for anything.

On the other hand, titanium is much less rare than gold on the pla-
net, but it is urgently needed by the colony's industry for the con-
struction of ship and submarine hulls, and mining it from the sea
floor is slow and expensive - a titanium trade bar would be seen as
very valuable and would certainly be accepted as payment.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

That is why I have taken Rusts advice and will be using Lanthanum based for trade bars.
It's a good sci-fi trade system since it absolutely necessary for Jump drives. (again I was looking for the Traveller version of gold pressed latinum)
I understand the concerns of gold valuation, etc... but since Lanthanum has a very specific price within the Traveller game mechanics when it come to ship building, I am going to use it.
Somebody raised the concern of a system not accepting it as "money". Please note that these trade bars are only used IMTU in many parts of Trojan Reach where there are large areas outside the borders of at least 6 recognized states. Credits are still accepted as money, but trade bars are also common, especially since much of the Reach is a wild pirate infested area.
They come in 50rc, 100cr, 500cr, and 1000cr bars.
While somebody can get the about the same amount for their bars of Lanthanum inside the Emperium, they would have to sell it as a commodity first as apposed to use it in point of sale situations.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

So, our 1 dton block of gold weights 14 * 1000000 * 19.3 = 270,200,000 grams.

Which is almost 60 % of the weight of a standard scout ship.
A good reason never to take a ship with a cargo hold full of
gold into the wilds, it would sink during ocean refuelling and
probably also into any surface except bedrock ... :wink:

That's why all of the Traveller ships above TL8 have GRAVITICS. You simply neutralize the gravity (or reduce it) so that you don't sink; you just hover a couple centimeters off the ground for as long as you like...

 

[rust]

... you just hover a couple centimeters off the ground for as long as you like...

Actually as long as you keep your power plant running,
turning it off (for example for maintenance or repairs,
or to hide from someone looking for you) would have
unpleasant consequences.

 

[Hans Rancke]

So gold in a system with way too much gold deposits wouldn't offer as good a price as say a place where such precious metals was in poor supply so that scout could carry say a few tons of gold from the gold rich place for say half the usual value and sell it at the system where its all bar non-existant for maybe as much as twice the normal value...

If the price differential is significant, traders will buy gold in one system and sell it in another, causing the price to rise in the first system and fall in the second.


Hans

 

[jasongee0656]

I am not aware of any mention of something like trade bars
in any Third Imperium source, but I may well have missed it.

Two metals which could be used are Lanthanum (used for the
construction of jump drives) and Iridium (which seems to re-
place gold in the Third Imperium's culture, for example the
Emperor's throne is known as the Iridium Throne). A third pos-
sibility could be Zuchai Crystals, also used for the construction
of jump drives.

I am new to Traveller and the resources, but what books are you referencing for the materials (Lanthanum, Iridum and Zuchai Crystals)?