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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2318726, member: 112&quot;]Mike your making a false assumption. Back then there were many standards, not just one like there is today. Silver and gold both had different values in different countries. And not only that there wasn&#039;t even 1 standard when it came to weight. You could even have different standards for weight within a single country as sometimes each city had its own standard. Here is an example of what I mean.</p><p><br /></p><p>The marc for example. Some won&#039;t know what a marc even is, but it was a unit of weight, and it was used almost everywhere, at least the name was. We would think of it as a pound with 1 pound being 2 marcs. And when coins were minted the laws of the time dictated that xx number coins be minted from each marc of gold or silver. With Netherlands ducats for example each marc of gold had to produce 70 ducats. </p><p><br /></p><p>And that was fine for the Netherlands.But when it came to exactly how much a marc was, well that depended on where you were at the time. Here is what I mean, the following table shows just how much a marc was in different places - at the same time.</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>As you can see there is considerable difference, just from those places alone. And in other cities it was different still. The weight unit of grams were the same everywhere, but the marc, the marc is what really mattered because that was the weight unit specified in the various laws of various countries as to exactly how many coins had to be minted per each marc. So a marc of gold in Amstrerdam was a different weight than a marc of gold in Antwerp. </p><p><br /></p><p>So you had two different sets of standards establishing values. There was the value of the gold and silver itself, which was different in each country, and you had different standards of weight on top of that. So every different gold coin, from every different country, had a different value everywhere you went.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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