I used compounded interest and found that Dunk was around circa 2.5 millenia ago. What gives?

I guess I should give a few more things for my procedure I also said that 1 gold equaled $1 UCAS. The higher the dollar amount the fewer years. I of course wanted to see an answer in in around the 6-9 millenia mark.

So once again what gives, I've rechecked what I've done over a half dozen times, so I figure I'm just completely missing something. Well please help me out.

Dunk just gave the man money so he could strike back at the corporation that turned it's back on him. It's either that or gold was a fair bit less valuable in the 4th world (perhaps someone who knows earthdawn could comment on this?).

The thing is he is hinting at the previous age. He would have just said here is this money do of it as you wish. (knowing full well what the man would do with it.)

However instead of saying here. He goes into a little detail of how he calculated it. Knowing that a smart person or someone with the right programs could calculate when Dunk and Art's ancestor had their meal together. I personally believe that many times in his will he is hinting at something.

The last Testament of Dunk's on page 21 gives a hinting at the scourge. For your every day person do they know that it is the scourge. No, however he seems to go into some detail that we as a society have to get together and start preparing for something that is mean and nasty and has in the past blown us nearly all away, and this time could be much different then the last, because of our technology and also having magic. However that doesn't mean we won't all get destroyed, it just means get together!

There's a lot of variables in that calculation though. For one thing, how much gold by weight is in a gold peice and how pure is the gold? This would affect its modern price. Also, interest rates fluctuate (unless Far Scholar used a flat interest rate, I can't remember if he mentioned it or not). It also doesn't say if he converted the gold peice as currency or as the value of the gold as a mineral. So it could've been 200 years ago or 200,000 for all we know because of the variables.

However, I think Big D knew full well exactly who would get the money and what he would do with it once he got it. Then again, everyone knows I'm a big fan of Dunkelzahn...in fact, there's only one immortal power player in Shadowrun I fancy more...gee, wonder who that could be?

The Abstruse One

"To Art Dankwalther, I leave the sum of 34,586,224,739.58 in UCAS dollars. According to my calculations and accounting for conversion of the original currency, inflation, and 1 percent interest per annum, this settles my debt to your ancestor for the gold piece he kindly lent me for the last meal we shared." (Kenson, Steve pg. 34 Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets)

Anyways to what I see there are two things we don't know of. These are the conversion of currency, what he deems as the rate of inflation.

I guess that the best way to convert the currency over to a dollar and also deal with inflation is to see what you could buy for a gold piece and how much it would cost in 2056. For instance how much of a meal could you buy.

Then from there I could figure out the rest again, though without the knowledge of those two things I guess there is a lot of immeasureables.

Of course I am sure that the answer can be attained, once again we just need to be able to think it through.

In real life, during the time when gold was used as a means of currency, most people lived their entire life without seeing a gold piece.
Hell, Judas got 30 pieces of silver for selling out Jesus. Jesus wasn't even worth a piece of gold to the Romans.

Anyway, I think you'd be much more on target if you cnsidered a gold piece to be one ounce of gold, which was worth, at COB Oct 31, $384.10.
If you plug that into your calculation, how many years do you come up with? I'd do it myself, buy I'm old and don't remember the formula.

With what you suggest as the the amount gold would equal currently due to inflation and conversion, I calculated their last meal to occur sometime in the 210 Decade, about 215 or 216.

In this case I used the will being originally writen at the beginning of 2056. Once again if anyone can say that I'm doing something wrong, that they're calculating a different answer I will believe them because I have a problem usually with inputting data into the equation. I didn't use a program too this was done with actual mathematics.

Now that I mention it, I'm willing to bet that Art is a decendant of some one who was at that famous last passover saeder with Jesus. Meaning that the Big D was also there.

Okay well that would be a probability considering that we can't have exacts in the money translation and he does mention the last supper in it. However I would have wished he was talking about something in the last age of magic, though I guess it doesn't matter overly that much.

Since Dunkie was probably running around the country side in ED as 'DarkTooth' (supposed emissary of Dunkelzahn) it seems likely that he ran into people then, and maybe was lent a gold piece when he didn't have any money. I think it much less likely that Dunkelzahn was in some way awake around 30 AD.

Of course, I do not know if they used gold pieces in earthdawn, or what the value of a gold piece was - if someone lent him a gold piece to pay for a meal they couldn't have been all that valuable, I think.

It wouldn't have been a gold piece if it was the Last Supper. They didn't use gold as currency then. Don't ask me what the currency was though...they talk about it in Life of Brian though ^_^;;

Anyway, the fact that Big D specified UCAS dollars instead of nuyen suggests that he knew who the descendant of his creditor was and where he lived.

The Abstruse One

If by "Last Supper" you mean the passover sader at which Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariat then they did use gold, but as pointed out that was very rare. The standard coin at that time was the Roman silver sestersi(I can't be sure of the pselling.) this was the most comon coin and is found by the boat load by archelogists. There was a gold coin in cirulation but it's use was limited because it was just too damn big. Think of it this way, how many of you handle $100 bills on a day to day basis?
As late as the 1900's in britain they had the gold guinea- which was 21 shillings. 21 silver coins to make one gold coin, (as late as the 1950's the British pound was worth more as a pound than for it's gold content.)

All in all, if you guys got the calculations right, in 210 CE, one gold piece must have been one hell of a blow out.

In ED times, gold pieces weigh 1/10 of an ounce; I imagine the purity depends on the grade of the ore and smelting techniques.

Jesus' bar mitzvah?
After all, we've doubtless got a few years of fudge factor here.

~J

The value of a mineral depends on many things, the best way to compare currencies is to find items of equal luxury and compare their costs.

After checking such luxuries in 4th and 6th ages, (5 gold as an expensive meal vs 5 for a "The Beast" at McHugh's) a 1 to 1 ratio of gold to is low end rational.

At such a rate, 1 gold ~= $5 UCAS and a 1% annual interest rate would take between 2278 and 2279 years. (34,573,082,890.17 and 34,918,813,719.07)