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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2428708, member: 112&quot;]mlubao - maybe this will help with understanding. Your basic question was regarding the British monetary unit of a pound and a corresponding coin of that amount. But there&#039;s really a lot more to it than that. And it goes back centuries, before, the time frame you are talking about.</p><p><br /></p><p>You see, the &quot;pound&quot; was also a monetary unit in most countries throughout Europe, not just Britain. And at the same time it was also a unit of measure, a weight, used in reference to silver, and gold. Although the marc, or mark, is the one we hear and read about most often. And 2 marcs equaled a pound. But there was also a problem for there was no universal standardization.</p><p><br /></p><p>The pound was used as a standard weight, but every city, not just every country, had its own pound with a differing weight, so the problems were enormous. The mark of Cologne, Germany, was the general standard until the 1800&#039;s, so the following list is a comparison with that standard:</p><p><br /></p><p>Cologne = 2 marc = 467.620 grams</p><p>French&nbsp; = 2 marc = 489.506</p><p>Aachen&nbsp; = 32 loth = 467.040</p><p>Amsterdam troy = 2 mark = 492.168</p><p>Antwerp = 2 mark = 468.800</p><p>Hamburg = 512 pennyweight = 484.690</p><p>Lisbon&nbsp; = 2 marcas = 459.100</p><p>Lucerne = medical pound = 357.950</p><p>Munich&nbsp; = 560.000</p><p>Naples&nbsp; = 12 ounces = 320.759</p><p>Stockholm = 425.34</p><p><br /></p><p>You see, all of those cities are talking about the same unit of weight - the pound. But it is only when you break it down into how many grams were in each pound, as above, that you begin to really see the problem.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is how it was, how it had always been since the very beginning of &quot;money&quot;. This is why everywhere you went, every city, town, and village - had its own money changers. This is why the coins of anyplace other than your home city, were not just accepted at their stated value. Every coin of every denomination had to be weighed and tested for fineness before it could be exchanged for the local currency. This was often true even in different cities within the same country. And that was because the local mint, well let&#039;s just say they didn&#039;t always adhere to the stated Royal policy of weight and fineness per coin. In other words, the local Count, Baron, Duke, Bishop .... - the local Noble who had minting authority for the area - quite often debased their coinage for their own monetary benefit.</p><p><br /></p><p>So when you added THAT to all the differing weights already in use in each different city, let alone each different country, when it came to &quot;money&quot; - well you had a mess is what you had.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now I could go on and tell you how a tiny little country that few if any even think of changed it all and became the most powerful trading nation in the world because they developed a coin that was instantly accepted and honored anywhere and everywhere in the world. And how that tiny little country set the stage for our modern monetary system, but that&#039;s another story altogether.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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