Dragons of Prometheus

[Straybow]

Of course, in the real world platinum wasn't even discovered until the 18th-19th century, and wasn't considered a prescious metal until late 19th. Tin mining communities in the Andes were digging up their streets and tailing piles for it.

 

[TKalbfus]

The western world didn't know about it until the 18th century, but the native Americans living there sure did. I'm presuming of course that Prometheus has more of it than Earth. I'm also assuming that each coin weighs and ounce rathert than 1/50th of a pound as D&D assumes, but I keep the D&D prices within this world. That means 100 coins weighs 6.25 pounds rather than 2 pounds under D&D. Once the Terrans arrive, this gives the Prometheans and advantage when buying high tech offworld equipment. No doubt the mining companies would move right in and hire a number of locals. Not only is there more precious metals, there is also more of that metal used in the manufacture of jump drives.

 

[Straybow]

I vaguely remember using 20/lb rather than 50. Either way I guess back then we had trouble with multiplying/dividing by 16. (Not much room to brag, eh?)

I'd never seen or heard of platinum precolumbian artifacts. It appears they plated some artifacts with silver-gold-platinum alloy (perhaps in ratio from whatever natural source) but didn't work with pure platinum: "The plating layer was found to comprise a 25 µm thick foil of platinum grains sintered with a gold-silver alloy. The high silver content of this alloy suggests the deliberate selection of pale-coloured, silver-rich alluvial gold."

Any European silversmith would know immediately that he was not dealing with plain silver, so it can't have been present in any quantity.

Google search otherwise revealed only modern platinum replicas of precolumbian goodies.

 

[TKalbfus]

Platinum is one of the few metals that doesn't need to be smelted. It has a high melting point so the rock around it will melt before it does. Platinum also sinks to the bottom of a bowl of mercury, few other metals are so heavy as to displace mercury, lead floats for instance.

 

[Straybow]

On the other hand, Platinum is too hard for coinage. It is very difficult to strike clear images and printing without sophisticated minting equipment. Maybe that's why AD&D used Electrum instead.

I found interesting pages that can help set up a medieval-type economy.

Medieval Price List

Historical Piracy Money & Prices (17th cen)

Also info on GDP and GDP/cap of medieval England can be found at How Much Is That?

Comparison of current values and constant 1995 values (GDP Deflator index 1995 = 100) in £

. . . . . GDP . . . GDP .. Deflate . . Pop .. GDP/cap . GDP/cap
year . (curr) .. (1995) . (100) . .. (mil) . .. (curr) .. (1995)
1086 . 0.137 . . . 217 . . 0.06 . . 1.531 . . . 0.09 . . . 142
1300 . 4.669 . . 2,092 . . 0.22 . . 6.000 . . . 0.78 . . . 349
1688 . . . 57 . . 7,294 . . 0.79 . . 5.501 . . 10.43 . . 1,326
1759 . . . 74 . . 7,893 . . 0.94 . . 6.493 . . 11.47 . . 1,216
1801 . . 256 . 13,969 . . 1.84 . . 10.686 . . 23.99 . . 1,307
1811 . . 333 . 15,680 . . 2.12 . . 12.146 . . 27.43 . . 1,291
1821 . . 321 . 20,728 . . 1.55 . . 14.206 . . 22.57 . . 1,459