Throughout most of history, gold has been rather more valuable than it was for most of the 20th century - a bit too valuable to be considered a commodity that was usable in "daily transactions". Consider 19th century Australia: for most of the latter half of the 19th century, the average weekly wage for a farmhand or worker was about £1/10/-, or about three half-sovereigns. How often do you or I, today, spend one-third of our weekly wage in one transaction? Speaking for myself, it happens very rarely, and certainly not on a "daily" basis.
Historically, the amount of money represented by a gold coin was even higher. In the Roman world in biblical times, a silver denarius was a day's wages, and a gold aureus was tariffed at 20 denarii - so the regular circulation gold coin was worth three weeks wages. That, of course, assumes you could find a shopkeeper who will accept your aureus in payment as "everyday change" - you might need to go find yourself a moneychanger, who will likely only give you 16 denarii for it. This "moneychanger effect" meant that gold coins tended to be kept until needed for a transaction that required a gold coin (such as buying luxuries or paying taxes), rather than exchanged for smaller coins or goods at a loss.
If you want gold coins intended for mass circulation amongst the common folks, look for the tiny ones - really, really tiny ones, like the Indian and Nepalese gold dams, or the US territorial fractional dollars. To become a useful "everyday" unit of money, however, the coin has to be inconveniently small - so you usually only find such circumstances in countries where there is plenty of gold about, but not much silver and copper available (such as California during the gold rush).
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 05/17/2015 12:09 pm
