I don’t know if I’m phrasing the question properly, so here’s a feristance. In World of Warcraft, currency comes in three forms: copper; silver (100 copper = 1 silver); and gold (100 silver = 1 gold; ergo 10,000 copper = 1 gold).
Notice how this is different from dollars and cents; there is no third tier above dollar or below cent.
Are there any currencies in the world that operate on the WoW model? Have there ever been any such currencies?
And, what is the proper term for such a currency? A triune currency? A trinitarian currency?
Technically, the US has just one level, the dollar. The cent is a hundredth of a dollar. However, there are two other fractional levels, the disme, or tenth of a dollar, and the mill (also mille), or thousandth of a dollar. Gas prices as posted often extend to mills, although of course they are not charged that way.
From the link:
So depending on how you look at it, the US has either one level, or four levels.
But the three-tier level cited in the OP allows conversion among the levels. I don’t think it’s the 1000s that matter, I think the US is two-tiered: there are coins and there are bills. Most currencies are that way nowadays.
Game worlds use all coins (no bills) and so need to have 1 silver = 100 copper, so a silver is like a dollar, a gold is like a $100-bill, so they can deal with large amounts without having to write down or carry 1,345,000 copper pieces.
I was in Nigeria in 1994, the Naira bill was worth about a quarter, and there were only ones and fives (my memory could be off), but basically, if you wanted to buy a suit at N 300, you needed 300 singles. It was a mess.
India before 1957 had three levels: 12 pies to 1 anna, and 16 annas to 1 rupee. Australia (to 1966) and New Zealand (to 1967) had a similar currency to the U.K.: 12 pence to 1 shilling and 20 shillings to 1 pound. Up to 1960 you could argue that the U.K. had 4 levels, because they also had 4 farthings equal to 1 penny.
Well, the Roman empire had currencies made of various metals. The as was made of copper, the sestertius , worth four ases, was made of brass, the denarius, worth four sestertii or 16 ases, was made of silver, and the aurius, which was made of gold, was worth 25 denarii. (there were also other coins, like the gold half aurius, the quinarius, made of silver, which was basically a half denarius, the dupondius, made of brass, which was a half sestertius, the bronze semias, which was half an as, and the quadrans, which was a quarter as, but…) Anyway, that’s a case where you have four different major types of coins, each made up of a different metal, convertable from one to another.
I don’t think you can define coins and bills as being different “levels,” since US currency currently has both $1 coins and bills, and formerly had general circulation coins for higher dollar levels.
But then, if you want to play that game with coins, you have the US, which had a cent, made of copper, a nickel, made of nickel-silver alloy, worth five cents, a dime, made of silver, worth two nickels, and the dollar, made of gold, worth ten dimes.
A farthing is, as the name suggests, a fourth of a penny, just like a haypenny is a half of a penny. So it’s not a different fundamental unit, any more than a quarter is.
If you issue one coin made of one metal, you can declare that it has an exact exchange rate with another coin made of another metal, but the actual relative value of the two metals will fluctuate. And what that means is that one metal or the other will flow into or out of the country, as people realize they can trade silver for gold that’s more expensive elsewhere, or vice versa. Or to put it another way, a fixed exchange rate between metals allows speculators to arbitrage any differences in value until the value matches the official exchange rate.
But you also had silver dollars, which were just coins that weighed ten times as much as a dime, quarter dollars at 2.5x, and half-dollars at 5x. I’m not a coin expert, but given the relative value of gold and silver, a gold dollar coin is going to be quite a bit smaller than a dime.
I find it interesting that American dimes have “ONE DIME” written on them, while Canadian 10-cent coins have “10 CENTS”.
And also, Canadian 25-cent coins have “25 cents” on them while American ones have “QUARTER DOLLAR”. I wonder if this has significance, historical or otherwise.
We also had the Crown (complete with its denominator - the half crown), and Guinea - these in their time were pretty much trade specific monetry units, they obviously have their equivalents in Sterling, but certain industries and trades would quote using them and not in the everyday currency.
There were coins minted to these units, but they sat uncomfortably with the regular coinage.These were carry overs from a previous coin system.
1 Crown = 5 shillings, half a crown was 2 shillings and sixpence - One reason why these were rather odd is that we had a 2 shilling coin, and we had a 10 shilling note - so there wasn’t really any need for them, they were just historical holdovers but the half crown was quite a popular coin, crowns were quite uncommon.
1 guinea = 1 pound and one shilling - extensively used in the horseracing industry, in fact quite a few race winners purses are still quoted in this denomination, certain luxury goods were priced in this manner too.The rest of us underlings used £.s.d .
There was no minted guinea coin after the gold ones were taken out of legal tender, and that was some way before my time. I do know that they did mint gold half guineas from time to time as special presentation awards at least as late as 1979 as a fellow navy colleague was awarded one when doing a Royal Tournament show, must be worth a fortune - only a couple were minted ( He climbed a rope to the top of a mast hand over hand as the button boy - look it up)Strange how a denomination can be quoted and yet have no actual physical monetry device.
I looked around to find a quote for that gold half guinea, not one, not even listed as existing - however I was there, saw it in its presentation box.
ISTR in Les Miserables (the book) Jean Valjean being in posession of a 40-sous piece. Was the sous a fraction of a centime (which was itself a fraction of a franc)?
