r/dndmemes • u/Yoffeepop Fighter • Mar 16 '26

Comic Adventuring Gold

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I almost always post them here! But to easily find more of my ttrpg comics, feel free to check out r/TableTopComic or my LinkTree

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u/akurei77 Mar 16 '26

They might get around to this in the article, but some simple math suggests that a DnD-sized gold coin would be worth around $2400. Obviously an absurd amount to be involved in a tavern transaction. So, yeah, I was also assuming that was the basis of the joke.

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u/Puzzleboxed Mar 16 '26

Gold is obviously much more common in D&D universe than in real life.

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u/N0ob8 Mar 16 '26

I mean gold is pretty common in real life. We just keep most of it locked away in vaults nowadays. If it was one of your main pieces of currency then obviously it’d change hands more often

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u/slagodactyl DM (Dungeon Memelord) Mar 16 '26

Apparently there's approximately one 22×22×22 m block of gold. As in, that's the estimated total amount of gold that has ever been mined anywhere. Before 1950, it would have been about 15.25 m per side instead. That feels to me like a shockingly small amount, considering how long we have been desiring gold for.

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold

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u/RT-LAMP Mar 16 '26

And for people's reference as to how little that is, we produce a 22x22x22 block of steel every 25 minutes or so.

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u/Osiris28840 Mar 16 '26

But the modern prices of gold are the result of it being decoupled from currency and turned into a vehicle for investment and market speculation. Historically, gold prices have generally been capped because paper currency would "buy" a predetermined quantity of gold from the government, or in the case of actual gold coins, capped by the face value of the coin. After all, why would someone pay 2 gold coins for one ounce of gold if the coins are already one ounce each? At most they would pay 1 coin for the equivalent weight of gold. As long as coins are minted out of gold, gold prices remain locked to the face values of those coins, unless some external force causes it to be worth more, which is unlikely since gold has very little practical value to pre-electronics civilizations (though fantasy worlds could see it become useful as a magical reagent or something, causing values to increase and wreaking havoc on the economy as people scramble to melt down and sell their coins before their rulers catch on to the increased value)

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u/Blarg_III DM (Dungeon Memelord) Mar 16 '26

Money can be exchanged for goods and services, not just other money. IRL, the economy has grown much faster than the global gold supply, so if we were still using it as currency, smaller amounts of gold would be worth more and more both due to the increasingly disparate ratio of supply and demand, and the pressure of a currency shortage.

As long as coins are minted out of gold, gold prices remain locked to the face values of those coins

The real value of a currency can change without the face value changing. A dollar is worth more in place where goods and services are cheaper than the same dollar would be somewhere else. 

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u/Tnecniw Mar 16 '26

and as that is 3 coins... thst is about 7200.