"These roman coins are part of a 159 coin hoard discovered near St. Albans, Hertfordshire. Gold solidi were enormously valuable coins. By law they could not be spent on retail market goods, but only for large purchases and deals like property sales and entire ship’s of goods. Whoever owned these coins was very wealthy, a merchant or a banker."
So if 159 coins represented a small fortune (and don't I mean like afford a nice condo kinda fortune, I mean like owning the whole building kind of fortune), what happens when the Heros come up from the Dungeons of Depravity with two thousand of the suckers?
Economics is something most table top gamers don't really pay much attention too. Sure, they are supposedly carrying around thousands of pounds of gold with little to no encumbrance penalties, but very little thought is given to what would happen when all that gold hits the economy. A ridiculous boom economy followed by runaway inflation and then a catastrophic economic bust. Who's mining and minting all this gold? Where did it come from?
I'm not saying that GM's should be laying out detailed economic charts for their game world, but the players suddenly finding their hard won treasure is now near worthless after a few weeks in town while everyone is suddenly wearing a solid-gold shoes, might make for an interesting development. Not to mention the sort of attention that kind of haul would attract from bandits, mercenary armies, tax collecting royals, would-be-mad emperors ....
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