Historical Coinage "Cheat Sheet"

Unfortunately, there are far too many variables to compare truly the purchase power of these coins over time and in different areas.  In general, however, until c.1492 it could be assumed that there was a rough equivalency in purchase power between coins of a similar form.

A variety of materials were used to manufacture coins:

• (b) Bronze:
  Specific Gravity (sg) (or grams/cc) = 7.8
• (bl) Billon:
  an alloy of "base" metal, containing copper, tin, lead, and a little silver. Proportions vary.
  • sg Copper = 8.9
  • sg Tin = 7.31
  • sg Lead = 11.35
  • sg Silver = 10.5
• (br) Brass:
  May also be the alloy referred to as "Orichalcum", which was not quite brass and not quite bronze.
  • sg Brass, Red = 8.7
  • sg Brass, Yellow = 8.47
• (c) Copper:
  Please note the Greeks and Romans did not always diferentiate between bronze and copper in coinage.
• (e) Electrum:
  An alloy of Silver and Gold, which has between 35 and 80 per cent gold.
• (g) Gold:
  This was never totally pure and often seriously debased.
  • sg Gold = 19.32
• (cg) "Crown Gold"
  22 carat.
• (s) Silver:
  Until after 1700 or so, Silver was the most important metal for money, and ranged in purity from the "White" or pure silver, to the base "Black", or silver so impure it was actually dark in color.

"Worth" is based on the silver penny, which was, more or less, a standard coin throughout history. This chart is not exact, nor can it cover all the fluctuations of a coin's value due to debasement or other economic fluctuations.

Coins marked with an asterisk have only an estimated value given. Coins marked with brackets are assumed to have existed, but no samples exist. Coins marked with an exclamation point (!) indicate a name in English as opposed to the appropriate language of the coin.

As for the supply of coins, for the most of the period between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the spread of the economic empire of the Italian city states, the actual coinage remained in the hands of the nobility. This is not to say that the nobles actually used the coins, it's just that the coins were "held": "hoarded" might also be an appropriate term. Some sources have suggested that coinage often made the "jump" from the catagory of money into that of jewelry, i.e., something pretty one might keep about the home, but really had no use. Therefore, although the price for an item might be set in what seems to be an amount of money, that price was rarely, if ever, paid in money. This sheds an interesting light on the giving and receiving of gifts among the nobility, or people of high office.

It is important to note that the variety of coins called Florins, Ducats, Doubloons, and Gulders across the face of Europe, were generally copies of the originals, or coins merely named after the original; it is therefore impossible to accurately place a value to these. Also, these coins often came in a silver or gold version. Where they were adopted, they generally became the generic term for gold coins; therefore, the values given here are based on educated conjecture.

The difficulties in following the value of coinage include an extensive debasement of the coinage later in the era and the economic upheavals of the Black Death, both of which contributed to major inflation. By mid-1400s, prices had finally fallen back below their 1300's levels, and currencies were beginning to return to "normal": then Columbus contacted the Americas. The subsequent glut of precious metals on the European Market eventually destroyed any hope of a stable international economic base for centuries afterwards.

Great Britain / United Kingdom