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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;xlrcable, post: 2560941, member: 41288&quot;]I&#039;m reading Paulette Jiles&#039; recent novel <i>News Of The World</i>, set in Texas in 1870. I&#039;m only a few chapters along but the historical detail seems generally very good. However, the beginning of the story involves a &quot;fifty dollar gold piece,&quot; which is later described as</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p>... a Spanish coin of eight escudos in twenty-two carat gold, and all the edge still milled, not shaved.</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Now my collecting budget is such that I get by without needing to know a lot about gold coins, but it seems to me the piece described would have contained very roughly 4/5 as much gold as a double eagle, and that therefore it might have been considered to be worth about sixteen dollars, not fifty. Is this a blunder on the author&#039;s part, or am I mistaken somewhere?</p><p><br /></p><p>(It may be a very good book, either way.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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