Paksworld

The cultures in Paksenarrion’s world are all advanced enough to use metallic coinage, though barter still exists (and still exists today, of course) and “paper” in the form of letters of credit and other non-coin exchange exists in some places.

Where you have coins, you have counterfeiters.    Paks, being a trusting soul, paid little attention to the coins she carried, though moneychangers were attentive to the possibilities.   In the new books,  with viewpoint characters who are older, more worldly, and having to deal with financial matters, I found myself facing the certainty of counterfeiters.

Only problem…I knew very little about how it was done.

Fernand Braudel’s massive work, Civilization and Capitalism,  which I’ve been reading for the past several years, well-reviewed here,  mentioned–among many other useful facts about monetary systems–that merchants in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance often carried sets of dies with them to restrike coins into the local coinage for better acceptance.

No need to pay the moneychanger to change your foreign “winks” into local “plonks”–or pay the tax collector because you were importing foreign currency….if your self-stamped coins passed, you were home free.   If not, you might be found swinging freely from a gallows.

Passing counterfeit money is a way of making an individual counterfeiter rich…or a way of helping one political entity to overthrow another by undermining its currency.   And I already had competing political entities in Aarenis, one of them determined to undermine the power of the Guild League.   Aha!  Counterfeiting!

But…how is it done exactly?   If you find some roughly cone-shaped metal objects, would you know they were coin dies of that period?   Surely counterfeiters’ tools do not come with a handy label “Property of Counterfeiters: Do not disturb!”

For a research enthusiast like me, this led to reading up on coins, dies, anvils, metallurgy, and (shortly before I wrote this) reading a tribute to a former blacksmith who, among his other jobs, repaired damaged destroyers of the 7th Fleet right after WWII.    (I now know why wrought iron was rivetted and mild steel was welded and why you can’t weld wrought iron to steel on a ship and have it hold.  This has nothing to do with Paksnarrion’s world, but it’s fascinating anyway.  Likewise the difference between working with a Little Giant steam hammer and an air hammer…)

Also along the way I learned why a drachma was called a drachma and why it was worth six obols (and what the obols were, which is not what I thought they were before I read this), why Aegina quit minting coins with sea turtles on them and started using tortoises instead…oh, it goes on and on.

You will not have to suffer through my research in the books.  Promise.   I will refrain from discussing the history of anvils,  the reasons for the various shapes,  the design of forges…but some of this stuff is a lot of fun.  To read about anyway.