To punch it up a bit, it's anyone with an interest in collecting/preserving coins or currency. Doesn't have to be an expert or rare. Coin/paper money/exonumia (tokens, fantasy issues) collectering = Numismatics
Also, fun fact for anyone reading, you can buy true, ancient Roman/Greek coins for a few bucks. Nice silver examples from certain well known emperors are often <$50. Just go on vcoins or somewhere reputable.
Yeah I always thought that the price of Roman coins, compared to more recent coins such as Tudor etc. is so cheap, I assume that's mainly due to there being so many of them?
I believe so, and I'm referring to bronze coins (so pennies/low value). It's likely that there are just a slew of them as well. Rome existed for 1000 years and was developed and widespread. They would have travelling mints go along with the armies/expeditions and mint coinage on site. It winds up spreading to everywhere, hence the hoards found in the UK.
It may have been that less were melted down as well, Roman currency was good for a long time.
A lot of the bronze coins claiming to be from the Romain era are fakes. It is fairly simple and cheap to make a fake Romain bronze coin and after selling it to a tourist for $5, fairly profitable. What I find funny is that when you tell a tourist they bought a fake bronze coin, the vast majority of them don't even care.
Yes, they really made of bunch of coins in the later part of the Roman Empire. Plus, the Romans didn't quite understand some basic economic principles and then would release new coins of higher quality to replace older ones of dubious quality. Since they didn't take back older coins, they just flooded the market with new coins, thus adding to the inflation problems of the third century.
My maternal grandfather was one, in Italy. Had his golden age in the early '70s, when numismatica and stamp-collecting were worth real money. He even got a personal letter from the Pope, thanking him for help in moving some special-edition Vatican-issued coins. But it's been a slow decline ever since, and the shop was closed after he retired. I knew him as a sort of old "Del Boy" character, but in his heyday he flashed some real bling - houses, big cars, and so on - some of which he even managed not to waste before passing.
Somewhere at my parents', I probably still have a bunch of early-80s albums with some not-particularly-rare Roman coins in them. Despite the gift, it was a hobby I really didn't care for, to his displeasure. Nowadays, I understand it's a very, very small game.
This is a great example of why people still hold gold as a safehaven asset of last resort; it was valuable two thousand years ago and it is still valuable today.
Gold's value has survived being buried, natural disasters, war, peace, ends-of-empires and anything else the world has thrown at it. Even after two thousand years it is simple enough to verify that gold is relatively pure.
Right, I was referring to the assayed value, not the historical value.
Gold is basically unique in history as a material with very little practical essential use for most people who have held it...yet holds value durably over the centuries.
Just think, some molecules of the gold in the traces on the mobo of the device you're using right now may have traded hands in Rome as a coin! Can't say that for an emerald...
Assuming Augustan values (lasted a few hundred years) [2]:
Assuming these are Solidus (4.5g = 1/2 Aureus)and not Aureus (8g = 25 denari), there are 12.5 denari per coin or 3750 denari equivalent. Which is the wage of 20 pedes (lowest infantry). Or $5k/year salary.
Actually that's not that bad considering it was 2000 years ago, the pedes were cannon (arrow) fodder, and compared to most of the world or the poorest counties in WV ($16k household income [3]).
I don't use the Diocletian values in [2] except to establish the Aurus Solidus relationship (since you assumed 5g) because Diocletian is considered a debaser, Augustus' reform lasted hundreds of years, and by Diocletian's time the Empire was in steep decline. I didn't read the article so I don't know if these are Diocletian coins, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is, for most of the Roman Empire period, how much was 1.5 Kg of gold worth compared to today?
Not that much then or now. Certainly within an order of magnitude of the lowest paid wage earner.
Survivor bias. There were plenty of other things people didn't know would be valuable and were wrong about and vice versa. Gold could be completely obsolete by 2100 or the currency of the empire.
Holding actual gold in case of a "last resort" is quaint, because who the hell is going to take your gold when insert cause of societal collapse happens? Seems like bartering and trade goods are more likely to be more common. And if you mean invest in gold because you can then use it to purchase fiat currency, how is that any different than literally other investment (real estate, stocks, etc)?
People hoard gold because they REALLY want to believe they're smarter than everyone else and can see the doom on the horizon. Or because they're rappers.
Could you give examples of other goods that were durable and valuable over a period of time of say 500 years but are no longer?
I can think of salt that lost about 80% of its value since ancient time. The loss is mostly due to the fact that energy got so cheap and salt is abundant.
Gold is quite unique in its scarcity and desirability. Curious for your examples.
Nah. The 'diamonds' thing was created by de Beers by advertising. Making everyone think you had to give a wedding ring when you get married - something everyone now believes. Getting control of all diamond mines, and restricting supply so prices are super-high. It's a huge and amazingly effective scam.
Whoops, I meant, a diamond ring. From the De Beers website (!) :
"1930s Diamond sales in the US were at an all time low They were seen as an extravagance for the wealthy, and sales, already declining for more than two decades, had plummeted during the Great Depression.
De Beers needed a strategy to create a multi-faceted
demand for diamonds In the unique position of having to
create demand for a product that hadn't been widely marketed before.
1938 De Beers hired advertising agency N.W. Ayer to craft a campaign They were chosen for their approach - to conduct extensive research on social attitudes to
diamonds.
A new form of advertising was born The brilliant concept was to create an emotional link to diamonds, the sentiment being love, like diamonds, is eternal.
1947 Frances Gerety A copywriter on the De Beers account at the advertising agency N.W. Ayer solidified the link between eternal romance and diamonds by suggesting the
line 'A diamond is forever'.
These four iconic words have been used ever since Making it one of the longest running and successful campaigns in history. By 1951 8/10 brides in the United States received a diamond engagement ring The engagement diamond tradition was established.
An emblem of love 'A diamond is forever' became a symbol of enduring love weaving itself into popular culture and inspiring books, films and songs.
1999 Slogan of the century It's no wonder Advertising Age voted the De Beers campaign as the top advertising slogan of the past century."
BTW, given nature of gold (an element) vs diamonds (carbon in a particular structure), would consider gold as more reliable store of wealth. Hard to imagine cost effective way to make gold. but there are no guarantees.
In terms of stability, diamonds are practically as stable as gold, for human temperatures, pressures and timescales -or even geologic or galactic timescales. Of course, they are much more manufacturable, as you note.
Why does 500 years matter? Again, that's the survivor bias. "Gold is great because we all decided it was valuable for a long period of time, but based on no specific usage". It's desirable because it's scarce and has a historic usage as currency. To assume that will continue to be valuable because of those (arbitrary) points seems like a flawed assumption.
Gold is valuable because there's a perception of gold's value. It works as a currency. Like Salt, or tea bricks, or gems, they have some applications, but were being used as trade goods because of the perceived value.
My point is simply that people in the 1400's didn't know that petroleum would become as important as it is or that high purity sand reserves were magnitudes more valuable than "regular" sand or that pounds of sugar would only cost a fraction of a laborer's hourly wage.
If the worry is "inflation/devaluation of a currency without without the complete collapse of modern society" SOMEBODY will have a valuable currency. You could just as easily say that instead of storing gold you could store bank notes from several different nations. You could also store bitcoins, or bricks of drugs, or all sorts of things that carry value in the current climate. Hoarding wealth in the form of non-useful items is a gamble. You're assuming someone will want your currency. It's plausible they won't. Wealth, as opposed to trade goods, is only worth how much someone else wants it.
>
Why does 500 years matter? Again, that's the survivor bias.
If you compare why in the last 10k years the Himalaya and Venice Beach did not reach the same altitude you may say that's survivors bias. But it's not. One thing has different characteristics from the other and they lead to different outcomes.
If it is survivors bias, then starting with a homogeneous cohort, over time fewer and fewer samples survive under some stress. So all I'm asking for is that homogeneous cohort that gold started with and that it accidentally survived. There should be something vanishing each 100 years.
I don't see that. I think gold has very specific characteristics that made it survive and yes, I agree, today the myth of gold is also one of them.
Currency is a product of culture. There is no homogeneous culture. You can't design a perfect experiment here. It's not an accident, that's not what survivor bias is, it's just that it's also not "gold is valuable because god himself ordained it and therefor it always will be until the end of all time".
Gold is valuable because we decided it's valuable. Other things have been used as currency, but people simply decided that gold is a good thing to use as a basis of an economy.
The fact that our current culture says gold is valuable because in the past it had been repeatedly valuable and therefor it will be valuable in the future is an illogical statement because of the part at the end. You can't predict the future. You can't actually know that the train of thought that made gold valuable in the past/present will keep running in the future. Maybe we move to away from capitalism and skills are more useful. Maybe a giant meteor full of gold is found and it becomes less valuable than silver or platinum or uranium or any other semi-rare stable element.
The point is, trade goods have their value tied up in need instead of perception and currencies are the opposite. Hoarding gold has shown to work in the past when. This has less barring on it's value in 100 years than you're trying to say.
> Gold is valuable because we decided it's valuable
Only one notable historical figure thought the opposite - Lenin wanted to line urinals with it.
Otherwise the perception of gold's value is practically universal and enduring.
> The fact that our current culture says gold is valuable because in the past it had been repeatedly valuable and therefor it will be valuable in the future is an illogical statement
greed is not logical! gold endures because greed endures.
Gold is not valuable because we “decided” it’s valuable. This gets repeated a lot, but it’s wrong.
Gold is an amazing element with very many applications. Due to its rarity on the mantle and difficulty in extracting it we use inferior, still expensive, but far more affordable alternatives (I.e. copper for many, but not all, applications).
Othewise your mobo manufacturer wouldn’t have blown it’s margins putting gold traces. And a Chinese “recycler” wouldn’t give up their health to recover it.
And this is without going into the aesthetics of gold. As engineers I guess many of us are uncomfortable with something as hard to quantity as aesthetics, but Au is almost universally considered pretty. Few metals aren’t off grey, and those that are tarnish.
So no, there wasn’t a council of info-Europeans and African tribes 10k years ago to decide that Au is worth a lot just because.
I mean, most of the historic value in gold is not related to conductivity and almost entirely on aesthetics and scarcity (and the fact that you can mint gold into coins without lose an infinite number of times, but silver and copper also work there). "Pretty" is cultural. It's made up. It isn't objective. The industrial applications of gold come pretty recently relative to the cultural valuation of gold.
The fact that everyone, everywhere thought gold was pretty 10,000 years ago AND it's elemental AND it has chemical properties that make it useful for applications now is why it's valuable. But it's still survivor bias and retconning that the Mayans and Romans had any clue what future applications there would be for gold.
> You could also store bitcoins, or bricks of drugs, or all sorts of things that carry value in the current climate
Thats true and every investor, even a disaster investor, should diversify. Except for cryptocurrency...they are barely useful during peacetime. In a disaster, people will want something they can put in their hands.
Most of your responses seem to suggest that there are people who are so crazy about gold that it is all they own. Only in James Bond movies...
my family escaped china when the communists took over and paid for the transport with gold because the currency was destroyed. My mother had gold bars sewn into her clothes. Jews escaped germany the same way. Finally, Governments keep gold as a storehouse of wealth.
It is a way to take portable wealth when currency is crashing. For example, Venezuela is crashing right now and gold is good for purchasing goods.
My family had large amounts of prime land in beijing that the chinese government confiscated that is worth hundreds of millions today. Good luck getting that land out of china when you have to flee.
Indeed survivorship bias - its survived for 2000 years as a valuable asset while nothing else has come close.
Its not accidental though as you allege...gold is pretty. People were originally fascinated with it because it looked nice. So it did have some unique founding qualities distinguishing it from other commodity metals. It just also happened to be hard to find and impossible to make.
You are wrong about gold being useless in a disaster. On 9/11 many gold traders in NYC stayed open...they understood the whole point of gold trading was to hedge against a disaster. History is full of countless tales of gold being accepted everywhere there is greed.
As to investing gold in a fiat - most hardcore gold bugs would tell you this is wrong and you should be holding the physical metal...don't even put it in a vault.
No matter what happens in society, an ounce of gold will always buy you a nice suit, a good meal and a room for the night.
Late imperial era, a slightly fuzzy date range. Included emperors Marcus Aurelius, Commodus (hello, Hollywood), followed by a very turbulent period from which my favorite emperor comes from, Geta. Because you don't want to be a Geta.
For anyone else as ignorant about this period of history as me, the Wikipedia articles are a real trip.
Geta -- murdered by his co-emperor and brother because they didn't like each other (aged 22)
Caracalla (the brother) -- murdered at the behest of Macrinus while urinating on the side of the road (aged 29)
Macrinus -- reigned one year before being defeated by an uprising that brought 14-year-old Elagabalus to power, ultimately beheaded
Elagabalus -- married and divorced five times during his four-year reign, including to the widow of a man he had executed and possibly also to a man; was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guards, beheaded, and his body was dragged around Rome (aged ~18)
Severus Alexander -- replaced cousin Elagabalus, did alright for quite a while (13 year reign!), but ultimately pissed off his military by trying to not fight the Germans, and was assassinated by his own generals, along with his mother
Maximinus -- made emperor by the Praetorian Guard, which caused the Senate to revolt; marched on Rome to put down the revolt, and was opposed by a series of emperors (numbered below) nominated by the Senate; ultimately murdered by his own military after failing to easily take Rome
(1/2) Gordian I/Gordian II -- father and son, rose to power while in Africa at the behest of the Senate; Gordian II was quickly defeated in battle by a supporter of Maximinus, after which Gordian I killed himself (reigned 21 days)
(3/4) Pupienus/Balbinus -- co-emperors after the death of the Gordians. Pupienus went out to fight Maximinus on the field, and returned to Rome successful. Balbinus stayed in Rome and fucked everything up. The two did not get along or trust each other, and ultimately both were murdered by the Praetorian Guard (reigned 3 months)
(5) Gordian III - Made Emperor at the age of 13 and sorta held it together for a remarkably long time, but ultimately died in Mesopotamia either at the hands of military enemies or his own army (aged 19)
I'm only stopping because I need to get back to work.
Game of Thrones sounds like a kindergarten show now. Almost sounds like a good game idea too: you play a roman emperor and the goal is to survive as long as possible knowing surviving a day's gonna be hard.
For anyone curious (I'm no expert) on the period value of this, I've seen estimates of ~$750,000 of purchasing power.
These are Aureus which equal 25 Denarius (silver coin of the time) which is roughly 1 full day of labor. So ball park 25 years of labor at 300 working days a year.
43 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadAlso, fun fact for anyone reading, you can buy true, ancient Roman/Greek coins for a few bucks. Nice silver examples from certain well known emperors are often <$50. Just go on vcoins or somewhere reputable.
It may have been that less were melted down as well, Roman currency was good for a long time.
Somewhere at my parents', I probably still have a bunch of early-80s albums with some not-particularly-rare Roman coins in them. Despite the gift, it was a hobby I really didn't care for, to his displeasure. Nowadays, I understand it's a very, very small game.
Gold's value has survived being buried, natural disasters, war, peace, ends-of-empires and anything else the world has thrown at it. Even after two thousand years it is simple enough to verify that gold is relatively pure.
But today that gold is worth only about $50k (300 coins * 5 grams) The millions of dollars quoted are the historical artefact value.
Gold is basically unique in history as a material with very little practical essential use for most people who have held it...yet holds value durably over the centuries.
Assuming Augustan values (lasted a few hundred years) [2]:
Assuming these are Solidus (4.5g = 1/2 Aureus)and not Aureus (8g = 25 denari), there are 12.5 denari per coin or 3750 denari equivalent. Which is the wage of 20 pedes (lowest infantry). Or $5k/year salary.
Actually that's not that bad considering it was 2000 years ago, the pedes were cannon (arrow) fodder, and compared to most of the world or the poorest counties in WV ($16k household income [3]).
I don't use the Diocletian values in [2] except to establish the Aurus Solidus relationship (since you assumed 5g) because Diocletian is considered a debaser, Augustus' reform lasted hundreds of years, and by Diocletian's time the Empire was in steep decline. I didn't read the article so I don't know if these are Diocletian coins, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is, for most of the Roman Empire period, how much was 1.5 Kg of gold worth compared to today?
Not that much then or now. Certainly within an order of magnitude of the lowest paid wage earner.
[1] http://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/sites/default/files/Pay%20S...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Equivalences
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_counties...
Holding actual gold in case of a "last resort" is quaint, because who the hell is going to take your gold when insert cause of societal collapse happens? Seems like bartering and trade goods are more likely to be more common. And if you mean invest in gold because you can then use it to purchase fiat currency, how is that any different than literally other investment (real estate, stocks, etc)?
People hoard gold because they REALLY want to believe they're smarter than everyone else and can see the doom on the horizon. Or because they're rappers.
I can think of salt that lost about 80% of its value since ancient time. The loss is mostly due to the fact that energy got so cheap and salt is abundant.
Gold is quite unique in its scarcity and desirability. Curious for your examples.
"1930s Diamond sales in the US were at an all time low They were seen as an extravagance for the wealthy, and sales, already declining for more than two decades, had plummeted during the Great Depression.
De Beers needed a strategy to create a multi-faceted demand for diamonds In the unique position of having to create demand for a product that hadn't been widely marketed before.
1938 De Beers hired advertising agency N.W. Ayer to craft a campaign They were chosen for their approach - to conduct extensive research on social attitudes to diamonds.
A new form of advertising was born The brilliant concept was to create an emotional link to diamonds, the sentiment being love, like diamonds, is eternal.
1947 Frances Gerety A copywriter on the De Beers account at the advertising agency N.W. Ayer solidified the link between eternal romance and diamonds by suggesting the line 'A diamond is forever'.
These four iconic words have been used ever since Making it one of the longest running and successful campaigns in history. By 1951 8/10 brides in the United States received a diamond engagement ring The engagement diamond tradition was established.
An emblem of love 'A diamond is forever' became a symbol of enduring love weaving itself into popular culture and inspiring books, films and songs.
1999 Slogan of the century It's no wonder Advertising Age voted the De Beers campaign as the top advertising slogan of the past century."
http://www.debeersgroup.com/en/our-story/innovation-hub/a-di...
Gold is valuable because there's a perception of gold's value. It works as a currency. Like Salt, or tea bricks, or gems, they have some applications, but were being used as trade goods because of the perceived value.
My point is simply that people in the 1400's didn't know that petroleum would become as important as it is or that high purity sand reserves were magnitudes more valuable than "regular" sand or that pounds of sugar would only cost a fraction of a laborer's hourly wage.
If the worry is "inflation/devaluation of a currency without without the complete collapse of modern society" SOMEBODY will have a valuable currency. You could just as easily say that instead of storing gold you could store bank notes from several different nations. You could also store bitcoins, or bricks of drugs, or all sorts of things that carry value in the current climate. Hoarding wealth in the form of non-useful items is a gamble. You're assuming someone will want your currency. It's plausible they won't. Wealth, as opposed to trade goods, is only worth how much someone else wants it.
If you compare why in the last 10k years the Himalaya and Venice Beach did not reach the same altitude you may say that's survivors bias. But it's not. One thing has different characteristics from the other and they lead to different outcomes.
If it is survivors bias, then starting with a homogeneous cohort, over time fewer and fewer samples survive under some stress. So all I'm asking for is that homogeneous cohort that gold started with and that it accidentally survived. There should be something vanishing each 100 years.
I don't see that. I think gold has very specific characteristics that made it survive and yes, I agree, today the myth of gold is also one of them.
Gold is valuable because we decided it's valuable. Other things have been used as currency, but people simply decided that gold is a good thing to use as a basis of an economy.
The fact that our current culture says gold is valuable because in the past it had been repeatedly valuable and therefor it will be valuable in the future is an illogical statement because of the part at the end. You can't predict the future. You can't actually know that the train of thought that made gold valuable in the past/present will keep running in the future. Maybe we move to away from capitalism and skills are more useful. Maybe a giant meteor full of gold is found and it becomes less valuable than silver or platinum or uranium or any other semi-rare stable element.
The point is, trade goods have their value tied up in need instead of perception and currencies are the opposite. Hoarding gold has shown to work in the past when. This has less barring on it's value in 100 years than you're trying to say.
Only one notable historical figure thought the opposite - Lenin wanted to line urinals with it.
Otherwise the perception of gold's value is practically universal and enduring.
> The fact that our current culture says gold is valuable because in the past it had been repeatedly valuable and therefor it will be valuable in the future is an illogical statement
greed is not logical! gold endures because greed endures.
Gold is an amazing element with very many applications. Due to its rarity on the mantle and difficulty in extracting it we use inferior, still expensive, but far more affordable alternatives (I.e. copper for many, but not all, applications).
Othewise your mobo manufacturer wouldn’t have blown it’s margins putting gold traces. And a Chinese “recycler” wouldn’t give up their health to recover it.
And this is without going into the aesthetics of gold. As engineers I guess many of us are uncomfortable with something as hard to quantity as aesthetics, but Au is almost universally considered pretty. Few metals aren’t off grey, and those that are tarnish.
So no, there wasn’t a council of info-Europeans and African tribes 10k years ago to decide that Au is worth a lot just because.
The fact that everyone, everywhere thought gold was pretty 10,000 years ago AND it's elemental AND it has chemical properties that make it useful for applications now is why it's valuable. But it's still survivor bias and retconning that the Mayans and Romans had any clue what future applications there would be for gold.
Thats true and every investor, even a disaster investor, should diversify. Except for cryptocurrency...they are barely useful during peacetime. In a disaster, people will want something they can put in their hands.
Most of your responses seem to suggest that there are people who are so crazy about gold that it is all they own. Only in James Bond movies...
It is a way to take portable wealth when currency is crashing. For example, Venezuela is crashing right now and gold is good for purchasing goods.
My family had large amounts of prime land in beijing that the chinese government confiscated that is worth hundreds of millions today. Good luck getting that land out of china when you have to flee.
Its not accidental though as you allege...gold is pretty. People were originally fascinated with it because it looked nice. So it did have some unique founding qualities distinguishing it from other commodity metals. It just also happened to be hard to find and impossible to make.
You are wrong about gold being useless in a disaster. On 9/11 many gold traders in NYC stayed open...they understood the whole point of gold trading was to hedge against a disaster. History is full of countless tales of gold being accepted everywhere there is greed.
As to investing gold in a fiat - most hardcore gold bugs would tell you this is wrong and you should be holding the physical metal...don't even put it in a vault.
No matter what happens in society, an ounce of gold will always buy you a nice suit, a good meal and a room for the night.
Powers that be issued a damnatio memoriae after his assassination where they tried to erase every trace of him, including his images from portraits: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Portrait...
Geta -- murdered by his co-emperor and brother because they didn't like each other (aged 22)
Caracalla (the brother) -- murdered at the behest of Macrinus while urinating on the side of the road (aged 29)
Macrinus -- reigned one year before being defeated by an uprising that brought 14-year-old Elagabalus to power, ultimately beheaded
Elagabalus -- married and divorced five times during his four-year reign, including to the widow of a man he had executed and possibly also to a man; was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guards, beheaded, and his body was dragged around Rome (aged ~18)
Severus Alexander -- replaced cousin Elagabalus, did alright for quite a while (13 year reign!), but ultimately pissed off his military by trying to not fight the Germans, and was assassinated by his own generals, along with his mother
Maximinus -- made emperor by the Praetorian Guard, which caused the Senate to revolt; marched on Rome to put down the revolt, and was opposed by a series of emperors (numbered below) nominated by the Senate; ultimately murdered by his own military after failing to easily take Rome
(1/2) Gordian I/Gordian II -- father and son, rose to power while in Africa at the behest of the Senate; Gordian II was quickly defeated in battle by a supporter of Maximinus, after which Gordian I killed himself (reigned 21 days)
(3/4) Pupienus/Balbinus -- co-emperors after the death of the Gordians. Pupienus went out to fight Maximinus on the field, and returned to Rome successful. Balbinus stayed in Rome and fucked everything up. The two did not get along or trust each other, and ultimately both were murdered by the Praetorian Guard (reigned 3 months)
(5) Gordian III - Made Emperor at the age of 13 and sorta held it together for a remarkably long time, but ultimately died in Mesopotamia either at the hands of military enemies or his own army (aged 19)
I'm only stopping because I need to get back to work.
These are Aureus which equal 25 Denarius (silver coin of the time) which is roughly 1 full day of labor. So ball park 25 years of labor at 300 working days a year.
I realize this is fuzzy, just an idea.