The coins of westeros have too big gaps

[Alden Rothack]

the Gaps between the coins are much too big for the higher value coins to be both worth that much and small enough to regularly use

even a very large dragon would make coppers too worthless to use

[Alester Florent]

I think we have to remember that we spend an awful lot of time around the wealthiest and most powerful people in Westeros, so gold dragons are going to be more common (and useful), especially as a unit of account for extremely large sums.

Assuming the figures on the wiki are correct, the gap between halfpennies and dragon is extremely large, but if we take the view that inflation since the time of their introduction has driven the value of halfpennies down to the point they're no longer all that useful (do we ever see them used?), then that gives us 11,760 pennies to the dragon as the full functional range of the currency.

The largest coin to be regularly minted in England under old money was the guinea, which yielded over a thousand farthings (the smallest coin), although exceptional coins went up to almost 3,000 farthings. But among modern coins, the Britannia has a face value of £100, meaning it's worth 10,000 pennies (the smallest coin in circulation). Its gold bullion value (which in Westeros would be almost identical to its face value) is much higher, around £1,600, making it worth 160,000 pennies. Of course, the Britannia is not really a coin intended for everyday transactions. So although a range of 12,000 or so in Westeros does seem unnecessarily large, I don't think it's inconceivable.

With that said, I agree that (leaving aside the Anguy/Sandor silliness in the first book) dragons are probably more common among the smallfolk than they should be. Dunk, a relatively poor man, has a couple on him when he turns up at Ashford in The Hedge Knight: this seems unlikely not only because it's an awful lot of money but because the coins are so large for the purposes he (or Arlan before him) were likely to need that they'd be useless, like trying to pay for a coffee with a $1,000 bill.

[Angel Eyes]

25 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

I think we have to remember that we spend an awful lot of time around the wealthiest and most powerful people in Westeros, so gold dragons are going to be more common (and useful), especially as a unit of account for extremely large sums.

Assuming the figures on the wiki are correct, the gap between halfpennies and dragon is extremely large, but if we take the view that inflation since the time of their introduction has driven the value of halfpennies down to the point they're no longer all that useful (do we ever see them used?), then that gives us 11,760 pennies to the dragon as the full functional range of the currency.

The largest coin to be regularly minted in England under old money was the guinea, which yielded over a thousand farthings (the smallest coin), although exceptional coins went up to almost 3,000 farthings. But among modern coins, the Britannia has a face value of £100, meaning it's worth 10,000 pennies (the smallest coin in circulation). Its gold bullion value (which in Westeros would be almost identical to its face value) is much higher, around £1,600, making it worth 160,000 pennies. Of course, the Britannia is not really a coin intended for everyday transactions. So although a range of 12,000 or so in Westeros does seem unnecessarily large, I don't think it's inconceivable.

With that said, I agree that (leaving aside the Anguy/Sandor silliness in the first book) dragons are probably more common among the smallfolk than they should be. Dunk, a relatively poor man, has a couple on him when he turns up at Ashford in The Hedge Knight: this seems unlikely not only because it's an awful lot of money but because the coins are so large for the purposes he (or Arlan before him) were likely to need that they'd be useless, like trying to pay for a coffee with a $1,000 bill.

I wonder if GRRM overestimated stamina in that book. How does somebody burn through so much wine, women (plus a knife and boots) over two weeks? Anguy must have steel for a liver (plus more down below).

[Alden Rothack]

8 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

I think we have to remember that we spend an awful lot of time around the wealthiest and most powerful people in Westeros, so gold dragons are going to be more common (and useful), especially as a unit of account for extremely large sums.

Assuming the figures on the wiki are correct, the gap between halfpennies and dragon is extremely large, but if we take the view that inflation since the time of their introduction has driven the value of halfpennies down to the point they're no longer all that useful (do we ever see them used?), then that gives us 11,760 pennies to the dragon as the full functional range of the currency

The largest coin to be regularly minted in England under old money was the guinea, which yielded over a thousand farthings (the smallest coin), although exceptional coins went up to almost 3,000 farthings. But among modern coins, the Britannia has a face value of £100, meaning it's worth 10,000 pennies (the smallest coin in circulation). Its gold bullion value (which in Westeros would be almost identical to its face value) is much higher, around £1,600, making it worth 160,000 pennies. Of course, the Britannia is not really a coin intended for everyday transactions. So although a range of 12,000 or so in Westeros does seem unnecessarily large, I don't think it's inconceivable.

With that said, I agree that (leaving aside the Anguy/Sandor silliness in the first book) dragons are probably more common among the smallfolk than they should be. Dunk, a relatively poor man, has a couple on him when he turns up at Ashford in The Hedge Knight: this seems unlikely not only because it's an awful lot of money but because the coins are so large for the purposes he (or Arlan before him) were likely to need that they'd be useless, like trying to pay for a coffee with a $1,000 bill.

the gap between the half-farthing and the five guinea was slightly over ten thousand and half farthings were rarely used because they were nearly useless, its possible that the lower value copper coins were phased out as happened with farthings and halfpennies in britain but it doesn't seem so as pennies are still used in Flea Bottom.

Pegging the westerosi penny to the farthing would indeed make the gold dragon worth over a hundred pounds which would be far too much and result in a far too big coin, the five guinea coin was one and a half ounces and rarely used itself.

It seems unlikely that Dunk woud have at least half a pound of gold on him. in similiar historical periods men in his position rarely got to see any gold and were paid a guinea a month if they were very lucky

[Aebram]

1 hour ago, Alden Rothack said:

It seems unlikely that Dunk woud have at least half a pound of gold on him.

How do you figure half a pound? I don't recall seeing the actual weights or sizes of the coins mentioned in the story.

[Alden Rothack]

1 hour ago, Aebram said:

How do you figure half a pound? I don't recall seeing the actual weights or sizes of the coins mentioned in the story.

the gold dragon has to be worth its face value or nobody would use them, therefore we can conclude that the coin is worth 210 times the stag and so on, the stag also cannot be worth less than the appropriate number of coppers.

therefore the coin has to be a certain minimum size, the five guinea for example weighed one and a half ounces and was worth 1200 pence compared to the Gold Dragons eleven thousand odd pennies