Money

Many kinds of money How many coins in a coffer? A PC and His Money.... The Silver Standard Alternate Money Systems

- - The history of money - -

Money (PH) - - - Dragon

Many kinds of money:
One man's trash may be another man's cash
By David S. Baker
(Dragon 114.32)

It was a dark and stormy night. Rain
rattled the wooden shingles of the tavern,
while inside two companions divided
treasure. They had just returned from a
raid on an orc lair, and the attack had
been a pushover.

When the spoils of their adventures
were separated and the drinking horns
were emptied, short goodbyes were exchanged,
and the two companions parted.
Each of them lugged equal shares of copper,
silver, electrum, gold, and platinum
coins. Both of them reached their far-off
homelands and immediately spent most of
the treasure re-equipping themselves for
future battles.

Sound familiar?

For some reason, wherever you go in
the AD&D® game universe, you always
run into the same money. You can pick up
100 gp in the elemental planes and spend
it in the Abyss. You can rob the king of
Bolerium and use the newly acquired
funds to pay off debts in the city-state of
Assisa.

David Godwin?s article in DRAGON®
issue #80, "How Many Coins in a Coffer?"
states that a typical coin weighs 1.6
ounces, has a diameter of 1½ inches, a
thickness of 0.1 inch, and a volume of
0.177 cubic inches. This is all fine, except
that many people assume that ?typical?
means ?always.? Not all coins are exactly
like this, and one might even venture to
say that few should be. The article is good
(and I highly recommend it), but it assumes
that all, or at least most of the coins
in the PMP are made out
of copper, silver, electrum, gold, and platinum.
To many people, this may sound reasonable,
but to me it sounds quite odd. In the
real world, as in any fantasy world, money
is the stuff of life. Through the use of
money, temples are built, wars are fought,
and kings are assassinated. There is always
something ? a seal, or a special
design, or even just a signature ? that sets
actual money apart from just ?plain? gold
(of course, it also helps to foil counterfeiters).
Money may be alike in many
ways, but not all money is the same.
From one country or civilization to
another, money is different. There are,
though, three basic aspects of money that,
while helping to distinguish different
systems, link the systems into a more
uniform and therefore easier view of
world economics.

Rate of exchange is the first property
that makes it possible to compare coins of
different types to one another. The easiest
way to use this property is to set an ?exchange
number,? either a whole number
or a fraction, which relates the most often
used coin, or dominant form of currency,
to the ?gold standard? gold piece. Using
this method, prices, treasures, and transactions
may be handled by changing the
values to gold and then back again. For
example, if a golden ?oompah? had an
exchange number of ½, then to buy a
horse worth 25 gold pieces you would
have to pay 50 oompahs. If a character

picked a pocket and discovered a purse
with 15 gold pieces worth of oompahs,
you would just multiply the gold value by
the reciprocal (reverse) of the moneynumber
fraction, which is 2 (2/1), and get
your amount in oompahs: 30. This may
sound difficult, but once you use the system
once or twice, its simplicity is beautiful.
The second aspect, actual value, is the
literal worth of a coin type, with relation
to the gold standard system. In other
words, this is the answer to the question,
?What would it be worth if it weren?t a
coin?? If the aforementioned oompahs
were actually gold-dipped lead, then their
actual value would be radically different
from their relational value.
The third, and most immediately evident,
property of money is its physical
characteristics. Dimensions, color, shape,
and materials all relate to this category.
When seeing an American penny and a
comparable Canadian cent, you can easily
see that they are different. Physical differences,
even minute ones, are the most
basic means of telling one system from
another.

Money can be made out of almost anything
tangible. The American Indians who
lived on the western Pacific coast carved
intricate patterns on seashells and arranged
them in strings to make beautiful
designs, while the same was done by some
woodland Indians with porcupine quills.
These strings were called ?wampum? and
served as money in and out of the tribe.
Some plains and woodland Indians, needing
to trade with the white man, made
blankets and other crafts especially for
buying things with. Food, horses, and
supplies were purchased using these articles,
until the Indians started dealing with
American money.

This brings us to the subject of supply
and demand. On certain islands in the
South Pacific, cows, pigs, and other livestock
were used in buying goods. When
Captain Cook landed in Hawaii, the islanders
paid him a price of twelve pigs for a
few nails. To the captain, the price was
outrageous, almost silly. Back where he
came from, nails were relatively cheap.
However, in the islands there was no ore
of any kind to be found, so metals were
extremely scarce. The unusual, hard substance
brought by this strange white man
was, even though ordinary to the captain,
precious to the islanders. This same type
of situation might be commonplace in a
fantasy world where widespread knowledge
of civilizations outside the immediate
community is virtually nonexistent.
When we look at the modern world, we
can see that individual countries have
individual money systems. The dollar, yen,
ruble, and peso are all from different
countries and all have different worths,
exchange rates and physical forms, although
neighboring countries such as the
United States and Canada sometimes have
similar money systems in order to make

money compatible and therefore make
trade between the two countries easier.

In my campaign, the wood elves in the
northern forests have come up with a
beautiful solution to the ?money problem.?
Small leaves are ceremoniously gathered
and
sent to the holy mint, where the
leaves are dipped into molten silver that
has been blessed by a priest of the high
circle of clerics. The silver clings, and as
the metal disintegrates the leaves, it takes
the form of the leaf it has just burned. The
money is distributed to local parishes of
the church, and is used to buy things for
the clerics, therefore entering the ?coins?
into the flow of money traffic. For clarity
in money changing and purchasing items,
each silver ?laure? is worth three silver
pieces.

The halfling city-state called Hjree has a
money system based on small rings consisting
of a gold and silver alloy ? a syn-
thesized electrum. The rings are each
worth five silver pieces, and are strung on
leather thongs. Each thong contains one
hundred rings, and in this way they keep
track
of their money.

In the dwarven kingdoms on the south-
ern tip of my main continent, pale green
jade pieces are shaped into round balls
worth two gold pieces each. These coins
are worth much more than they would be
as gemstones, simply because, as in our
own world, they are considered more
valuable because they are money.

One money system that is especially
imaginative is the one used in the kingdom,
of Horcamar. Hundreds of years ago, a
migrating pack of dark-skinned humans
shipwrecked on the treacherous reefs
ringing the island they called Horcamar.
They immediately discovered three of the
five oases on the wide desert island, and
settled down. Because it was extremely
hot on the island, it became necessary to
preserve food so it did not go bad. After
unsuccessful tries at boiling salt out of the
sea, it was discovered that a large salt
deposit
lay very near the main oasis. Later,
they found that the deposit was actually a
vein
of salt "ore," and two others were
found. Salt became the base of trade for
the new island kingdom.

As maritime trade increased, money
became an issue. Since there was very
little metal on the island, it was decided
that salt would be the medium used. It
was decreed that a special salt block
would become the national coin, and that
it would be used not only in local trade,
but in trade with other countries as well.

A royal mint was built, and hundreds of
cartloads of raw salt were brought from
the mines. Special care was taken to refine
the salt until it was snowy white and pure.
It was then sprinkled lightly with mineral
water and mixed until it was doughy. The
salt mixture was then shaped into blocks
half an inch square and set to dry. After
the blocks had hardened, they were encased
in a thin layer of special wax and
stamped with the seal of the king of Hor-

camar. The salt blocks were then consid-
ered official coins and were distributed
throughout the country.

When the rich ?salt barons? got tired of
carrying individual blocks around, they
came up with a great idea: they proposed
that the government change the formula
of the wax case slightly so that the salt
blocks would adhere to each other. The
government experimented with it, and it
worked. Eight blocks, stuck together so
that their seals faced outward, became the
basic unit of money in Horcamar. Rich
men had ?purses? ? actually small, goat-
drawn carts ? to haul their money
around. Those of the middle or lower
classes did without purses because they
had so little money they could carry the
individual blocks in their pockets.

However, the rich began to complain, as
rich people often do, about the bulkiness
of the salt brick. A millionaire had to have
a whole storehouse in which to keep his
or her bricks. For millionaires, this wasn?t
really that much trouble, but they still
compained. Also, to make matters worse,
someone was beginning to counterfeit the,
brick, therefore decreasing the value of
the true, government-made bricks. The
?new and improved? salt brick was becom-
ing quite a problem.

So the government started a brand new
system of money called ?brick papers.? The
original idea of the papers was to allow
the citizens to deposit their bricks in one
of the national storehouses and in return
get a receipt. The receipt was refundable
at any time and was not intended to be
used as currency, but after a few months
it was. The government made the mistake
of not putting the name of the depositer
on the slip, therefore allowing anybody to
redeem it.

At first, the government tried to stop the
use of the papers as money by not accept
ing them in government establishments,
but they later realized what a great idea it
really was. Thus, the first paper money
was created.

The royal mint began urging citizens to
deposit all salt funds in the storehouses,
and issued a brand new salt note. The
paper ?brick? note was worth the same as
the eight-block salt brick, and even bore a
picture of the now outdated brick, along
with the elaborate seal of Horcamar which
was stamped onto the note, therefore
making it legal. Small notes, called blocks,
were issued in order to allow smaller
sums. Each block bill was half the size of a
brick, but worth one-eighth of one. Larger
notes were issued, and the system gradually
became as complex as many of the
ones we have in the real world today.
Not all money systems will or should be
as detailed and lengthy as this, but they
should at least show some imaginative
thinking on the part of the Dungeon Master.
(But then, DMs are naturally creative,
aren?t they?) Each new city or country that
a party visits ought to be a new experience.
Problems with buying supplies and

renting space should usually be solved by
everybody?s favorite man ? the money
changer.

The Dungeon Masters Guide (on page
90) says that towns do not encourage
using foreign currency. The passage sug-
gests a 5% deduction from funds changed
for the service and taxes. This should be a
rock-bottom minimum, the majority of
changers taking at least double that. Most
people think of moneychangers as greedy
shylock-types who charge outrageous fees
and steal funds from the unsuspecting but
that need not always be true. A money
changer may have any type of personality)
but each must make a living at what he
does by taking a service charge out of the
money he changes. This charge would
relate to how easy it is to return the
money to its respective country, and how
much money has been changed.

Of course, moneychangers will definitely
refuse to change counterfeit currency.
Though most money is designed with
difficult patterns, intricate carvings and
elaborate seals, in order to prevent copy
currency, ?funny money? seems to
crop up quite often. Obviously, the more
difficult a piece of coinage is to make, the
more difficult it is to duplicate. One must
take this into account when designing
money systems.

If the three basic qualities of money are
considered, only the bare bones of the
system need be filled out and the rest will
just come naturally. Below is a list of the
factors to think about as you create a
system.

    What racial preferences are involved?
    What materials are available?
    What material(s) are considered valuable by the culture?
    What material(s) are considered sacred or holy by the culture?
    What will be the value of the currency?
    What will the culture call the money?
    What will the money look like? (dimensions, color, shape and size)
    What types of money sytems do neighboring countries use?
    What will be the rate of exchange with neighboring countries?

Of course these are just guidelines to
either get you started or to help you be
more creative with your money systems.
As you can see, in a fantasy world, even
the creation of money can demand creativity.
The local moneychangers should be
rather important figures in an adventurer's dealings with society,
and a Dungeon Master can use them to relieve a party of a
bit of excess cash, if the need arises. So
next time you need a little flavor for the
friendly neighborhood ogre's treasure
hole, mix coins and currency of different
types and let the party handle the problem
from there. They might even have to
travel to the coins' respective "home countries" in order to spend or change them,
and that could be an adventure in itself!

How many coins in a coffer?
Don't forget, all that treasure takes up space
by David F. Godwin
(Dragon 80, page 9)

The values and weights of the various coins in the AD&D game
system are reasonably well defined. A coin of any type weighs
approximately a tenth of a pound, or 1.6 ounces. But many DMs
are continually faced with the problem of the volume of large numbers
of coins. How many coins will lit into a coffer? A chest? If a
room is filled with copper pieces to an average depth of one foot,
how many cp are there in a 20-by-20-foot room? How big is a gold
ingot weighing (or worth) 200 gp? (In the official modules, ingots
crop up all the time.) Finally, the ultimate question:
How many coins can you cram into a portable hole?

To solve these problems, we need to know the size of the coins.
Nothing is said about the actual size in the AD&D rule books,
although the PH says all coins are "relatively" the
same size and weight. (It's a line point, but does "relatively" mean
equal with respect to one another, or approximately equal?) Having
all coins of the same size and weight is very convenient, even necessary
for game purposes, but it is fundamentally an absurd idea.
Platinum weighs almost 2½ times as much as copper, so how can
coins of equal size weigh the same? And if they weigh the same, how
can they be the same size?

The RuneQuest game system manages to survive with a different
encumbrance value for each of its three coins, but that system
presents problems of its own. No way does silver weigh twice as
(that of a silver dollar coin), but that the thickness varies according
to the relative weight of the metal used.

The problem here is that having a different thickness for each coin
involves computing the volume occupied by each different type of
coin and applying it in each individual case. I have actually done
this myself, as described further on in this article, but you would still
have some fairly hairy ? and unnecessary ? calculations to make
in order to apply the figures. The different-thickness solution summons
the shunned demon of Needless Complication.

(In the D&D® game, all coins are supposed to be about the size of
a half dollar, but even a platinum piece that small would have to be
3/8? thick to weigh a tenth of a pound.)

Another easy way out would be to say that the laws of nature as
much as copper! Of course, it doesn?t say all coins are the same size;
the rules don?t mention size at all. For all I know, a gold wheel could

be the size of a pinhead and a copper clack the size of an airplane
tire. In the Tunnels & Trolls system, all coins weigh the same ? a
tenth of a pound, by some amazing coincidence ? but nothing
whatever is said about size.

The easiest way out is to reiterate that it?s only a game and isn?t
supposed to be totally realistic. What?s realistic about fire-breathing
dragons or alignment languages? How does that accord with the
laws of biology and physics? There are quite a few of us out here in
the boondocks who feel perfectly comfortable with basilisks, fireballs,
illusions, the fact that a spell called ?continual light? produces continuous
light with nothing intermittent about it, and even the rule
that clerics can?t use edged weapons, but who balk at the idea of a
world where platinum, gold, electrum, silver and copper all weigh
precisely the same for a given volume. And if we do say that all coin
metals weigh the same, we are still faced with the volume question.
It would certainly be too complicated to have a different weight
for each one of five coin types. Not only would that be playing
?house rules poker? and give the DM a nervous breakdown, but the
volume problem doesn?t come up often enough to make that the
easiest solution.

One possible, halfway realistic solution is to say that all coins
weigh 0.1 (one tenth) lb. each and have a diameter of about 1½?
(that of a silver dollar coin), but that the thickness varies according
to the relative weight of the metal used.

Another easy way out would be to say that the laws of nature as
we know them don?t apply in the world(s) of AD&D? gaming (for
example, magic works) and all metals weigh the same. If you?re sold
on the dollar coin as a standard, including thickness (1.5 millimeters),
you can even say that all coin metals weigh 24% more than
platinum, one of the heaviest known substances on earth! (A new
Eisenhower dollar weighs 24.59 grams; a tenth of a pound is 45.36
grams.)

One more possible and not altogether unreasonable solution is
this: In the world of reality, we are faced with the totally unreasonable
fact that light always travels at the same speed regardless of how
fast you?re moving with respect to the source. The light from a
distant star strikes the earth with a velocity of about 186,300 miles
per second. If the earth happens to be moving toward that star at
50,000 miles per second, the light from that star still has a velocity of
186,300 with respect to the earth, not 136,300.

So, in a hypothetical AD&D world, there may be a natural law to
the effect that, although coins may be of different sizes or thicknesses,
it takes the same number of coins to fill a given volume
regardless of the type of coin or the volume of any individual coin.
We already know that the volume held by a Leomund?s secret chest
varies with the level of the magic-user, regardless of the size of the
chest. We can simplify matters considerably by saying that, due to
the weird laws of physics in an AD&D universe ? which allow
magic to work ? any container will hold, say, four or five coins per
cubic inch, period, regardless of the size, shape, thickness, or volume
of any individual coins.

Ah, but the resources of ?logic? and ?science? are not exhausted
yet! Who said that we are dealing with pure metals? A medieval
technology, even with the help of dwarves and gnomes, can certainly
not attain 100% purity in its refining processes. Therefore, we can
easily say that all coin metals in the AD&D world weigh the same
because of impurities. Even with modern methods, it?s possible for
refined gold to weigh more than refined platinum, even though pure
platinum weighs about 10% more than pure gold. Of course, the
impurities would have to be different from those naturally occurring
on this earth, but we can always postulate substances like adamantite,
mithril, or ?gygaxite? to account for the fact that all refined
metals wind up weighing the same and to average out the 7-to-3
weight difference between pure platinum and pure copper. (I wonder
what sort of metal adamantite would be, since diamond weighs only
3½ grams per cubic centimeter. Very light and very hard, obviously,
which accounts for its desirability.)

For that matter, there is no particular reason to insist that what we
call copper (or silver, or gold, etc.) is the same thing as what the
inhabitants of a fantasy world call copper, etc. Maybe it's just copper-
colored gold . . .

Okay, so, by whatever method you want to use to explain it, all
coins are the same size (diameter and thickness) and weigh a tenth of
a pound each.

But what size is this size, and how many coins will fit into a given
volume? The original question.
Since we?re saying that all coins weigh the same, a good starting
place would be to take the average of the specific gravities of the five
pure metals. The specific gravity of a substance is how much it

weighs compared to water. The specific gravity of water is 1. If
something weighs twice as much as the same volume of water, its
specific gravity is 2, and so on. (The specific gravity of diamond is
3.51.) The system is very handy if you use metrics, because a gram
is defined as the mass of 1 cubic centimeter (cc) of water under
normal conditions. Therefore, the specific gravity of anything is its
weight in grams per cubic centimeter. (Mass equals weight for all
practical purposes, under normal conditions of temperature, pressure,
etc.) The weight in grams of 1 cc (that is, the specific gravity)
of each of the five coin metals is: platinum, 21.4; gold, 19.3; electrum
(average of gold and silver), 14.1; silver, 10.5; and copper, 8.9.
So if a copper ingot weighed 8.9 lbs., a platinum ingot of the same
size would weigh 21.4 lbs. ? if you were dealing with pure metals.
The average of all these, and therefore the working specific gravity
of any coin metal in our hypothetical world, is about 15. Things
will wind up being simpler in the end, however, if we heavy things
up a bit and call it 15.66. A tenth of a pound (about 45.36 grams) of
any coin metal, therefore, would have a volume of 2.9 cc or 0.177
cubic inch. If the coin has the same diameter as our dollar coin, then
it is 1½? (3.81 cm) in diameter. With a volume of 0.177 cubic inch,
a coin would be almost exactly 1/10? thick, and you could stack 10
coins to the inch. (Now you know why we used 15.66 for specific
gravity instead of 15. The lower figure would give us a thickness of
2.63 millimeters, or about 7/64?.)

Of course, 15.66 is 176% of the specific gravity of pure copper,
and the copper metal wouldn?t be as heavy as this even if it were half
platinum, even though an alloy of half copper and half osmium (the
heaviest matter on earth with a specific gravity of 22.5) would be
about right. We might note here that a copper piece, if made of pure
copper and only as thick as an Eisenhower dollar, would have to be
more than 4½? in diameter ? a tad unwieldy, but that?s how much
pure copper it takes to weigh 0.1 lb.

The specific gravities of the pure, or nearly pure, metals being
what they are, we could more plausibly use the idea of impurities to
produce a system where 1 gp or 1 pp would weigh 1 gp, a copper or
silver piece would weigh ½ gp, and an electrum piece would weigh
¾ gp. But again, this seems like unnecessary complication.
We now have the following data for a standard, typical coin ?
regardless of metallic composition ? in the AD&D game:

Weight 0.1 lb. = 1.6 ounces = 45.36 grams

Diameter 1½" = 3.81 cm

Thickness 0.1" = 0.254 cm = 2.54 mm

Volume 0.177 cubic inch = 2.9 cc

Specific gravity 15.66

Now you cannot say that, because the volume of a coin is 0.177
cubic inch, a box with a volume of 177 cubic inches would hold
1,000 coins. It would hold that much solid coin metal, but not coins.
Round coins take up the minimum amount of room if they are
neatly stacked. By experiment, loose coins take up about 110% as
much room as stacked coins. Now the volume effectively occupied
by a stacked coin has to be figured as a rectangular solid 1½? x
1½? x 0.1? (0.225 cubic inch) because you can?t put anything ?
certainly not coins ? in the little empty spaces left because of the
roundness of the coins. But you don?t, really need to know all that,
just the number of stacks and the height of each stack.

Since the figure for a loose coin is 110% of the effective volume of
a stacked coin, the effective occupied volume of a loose coin is
0.2475 (99/400) cubic inch. There?s nothing hard and fast about the
110% figure, so let?s make that 0.25 (1/4) cubic inch, and there will
very conveniently be 4 loose coins per cubic inch.

Before considering coffers and so on, let?s dispose of backpacks
and sacks. These things will physically hold a lot more coins than
you can carry in them. A backpack, for instance, supposing it to be
just the right size for a standard spell book (DRAGON® issue #62),
is 16? x 12? x 6? (1,152 cubic inches), pretty close to the size of a
modern camping backpack. Therefore, it ought to hold 4,608 loose
coins, right? So what happens if you put 460+ pounds of gold in a
leather backpack and pick it up (assuming you have a strength of 19
or better)? The straps come off and it comes apart at the seams! The
same thing applies to saddlebags, and even moreso to sacks. So how

many coins can you put in these containers without damaging them?
The answers are nowhere to be found in the main AD&D rule
books, although it is at least implied in the illustrative example on
page 225, Appendix D, of the DMG that a large sack will hold 400
gp and a small sack 100 gp. These figures are confirmed by the data
in the AD&D Character Folder, which also gives 300 gp for a backpack.
Nowhere is anything said about saddlebags beyond price and
encumbrance, but it?s probably safe to assume 300 gp on the average,
like a backpack.

Now back to the coffer: If the dimensions happen to be 5? x 7? x
1½", or 52½ cubic inches, the coffer will hold 3 coin stacks one way
and 4 stacks the other way (assuming a coin diameter of 1 1/2").
That?s 12 stacks 1 1/2" high at 15 coins per stack, or 180 coins. But,
since the box is 1½? deep, you?ve still got room to make short stacks
of coins turned sideways around the edges ? three stacks 1/2? thick
(5 coins each) and four stacks 1? thick (10 coins each) ? so that?s
another 55 coins for a total of 235 coins. There is still an unoccupied
volume of 1 1/2" x 1? x 1/2" in the corner, but you can?t cram even
one more coin in that. This space will be occupied if the coins are
loose, however, but, at 4 coins per cubic inch, the coffer will only
hold 210 coins if they are loose instead of stacked.
How many coins will fit into a chest 18? x 30? x 18?? This one?s a
little easier ? 12 x 20 = 240 stacks 18? high with no room left over.
(If the dimensions are up to you, make the horizontal measurements
multiples of 1½" to avoid the ?coffer problem.?) The volume is
9720 cubic inches. Right away we see that the chest will hold 43,200
stacked coins or 38,880 loose coins. (Each stack has 180 coins; 180 x
240 = 43,200.)

If a 20-by-20-foot room is filled with copper pieces to an average
depth of one foot, how many cp are there? (A similar problem
cropped up in a module published in DRAGON Magazine last <which one?>
year.) If loose, as they almost certainly will be, there will be
2,764,800 cp, the monetary equivalent of 13,824 gp, almost enough
to cover the living expenses of ten 7th-level characters for two whole
months, and it only weighs a little over 138 tons!

Furthermore, since that?s a volume of 400 cubic feet, you can?t
even get all those copper pieces in a portable hole, which has a volume
of only about 283 cubic feet. (Of course, a 10th-level magicuser
could teleport home with all of it by making only 1,106 round
trips.)

Which brings us to the final question: How many coins can you
put in a portable hole? Such an item is 10 feet deep and 6 feet in
diameter, for a volume of 488,580 cubic inches. We?ll consider only
loose coins in this case; who?s going to stack them? At 4 coins per
cubic inch, the answer is: 1,954,320 coins.

Ingots are another problem altogether, and send us back to specific
gravity. Take an ingot that weighs 200 gp. If it is pure gold, it
will have a volume of about 28 2/3 cubic inches, which might be 2½?
x 2 7/8" x 4?. But that?s pure gold. If all coin metals weigh alike,
then, under the system developed here, an ingot weighing 200 gp
(20 lbs.) would have a volume of about 35 1/3 cubic inches, maybe
2 5/8 x 2 5/8 x 5 1/8. If the specific gravity of any coin metal is, as we
figured, 15.66, then it weighs 15.66 grams per cubic centimeter,
which works out to about 0.035 lb./cc or about 0.566 lb. per cubic
inch. Dividing 20 lbs. by 0.566 lb/cu. in. yields the 35 1/3 cubic
inches.

If you want to be exact, you use this method of dividing by 0.566,
which is the same as multiplying by 1.767. It would seem to be a
heck of a lot simpler, though, just to multiply by 1.75 (1 ¾) to get an
approximate volume, which is all you need anyway. In the case of a
20-lb. ingot, this would result in a volume of 35 cubic inches,
neglecting only a third of a cubic inch ? which ain?t much when
you divide it up between three dimensions.

Just for information, here are some data I've compiled for the
system of different coin thicknesses (all diameters are 1 ½?, all
weights 0.1 lb.) for the pure metals. This system is much too complicated
for game use, but might be of interest to somebody. The figures
do show how the system of "all coin metals weigh the same due
to impurities" as outlined here serves as a workable compromise
among the actual pure metals involved.

<note: the version in BEST OF DRAGON Vol. V might be slightly different>

Many kinds of money	How many coins in a coffer?	A PC and His Money....	The Silver Standard	Alternate Money Systems
-	-	The history of money	-	-
Money (PH)	-	-	-	Dragon

Weight	0.1 lb. = 1.6 ounces = 45.36 grams
Diameter	1½" = 3.81 cm
Thickness	0.1" = 0.254 cm = 2.54 mm
Volume	0.177 cubic inch = 2.9 cc
Specific gravity	15.66