Prager Groschen were not clipped. The volume of silver was changing. King Wenceslaus II. was originator of monetary reform in Bohemia in A.D.1300 and introduced “grossus Pragensis” (lat.) as standard money. Silver was chosen as a metal due to rich findings of siler deposits around Kuttenberg. Volume of silver in coin was ~93%. As time passed,volume decreased. During reign of Charles IV. it dropped to ~80% and in our game period with king Wenceslaus IV. it decreased further to ~62%.
During 250 years of minting in Kuttenberg ~500 milion coins were produced.
It was a valid currency across Europe in those times. Late medieval €
I guess WAR… war never changes
Great info, thanks! That’s a big part of what I love about this game - the info good folk bring to the fora, and the personal research it leads me to do.
BTW - you can buy period groschen very easily - bought 2 on ebay, one pretty good quality for about $30, one less quality for about $12.
I might look into buying some myself
Thanks
Prager groschen had also one of the first anti-forgery systems implemented = ribbed edges. It was easily recognized visualy if coin was “clipped”. This system is used on coins till today.
That makes sense It is even a quest in the game duh lol…
Forgery system used in the story of our game was very sophisicated. Based on so called amalgamation. It used ability of quicksilver to bond with silver rich minerals. This could be used to coat copper surface with very thin layer of silver. Residual quicksilver would evaporate. Such coins were difficult to identify visualy. Quick’n’dirty way would be to try to bend the coin,as copper is very soft metal.
You can take a look at real groshen here https://technet.idnes.cz/foto.aspx?r=veda&c=A180411_135015_veda_kuz .
A hidden cache with 348 groshen was just recently discovered in medieval cellar in Říčany (somewhere around here https://goo.gl/maps/BnQURFmLzKP2 ) - just 20 km from Skalitz ;-). The treasure was probably hidden just before 20th November 1420 as on this day the Říčany were burned down by Hussites. The cache includes the Wenceslaus IV-minted groshed so they are from KCD era for sure (maybye even from Skalitz silver :-).
The article is in czech but according to the historian mentioned there the 348 groshen ought to be enough for 6 cows, 2 horses or smaller village house.
Very cool, thanks for sharing!!
What was a Groshen to Henry? A dollar, quarter, dime?
I’m thinking a buck or two maybe. It would be like a shekel or a shilling I would guess🙂
According to a Reddit post , using the amount in silver a groshen is the today equivalent of $57 us
I question that. $57.00 US is about 3-1/2 ounces of silver. Unless that takes into account inflation over 615 years, that is one big groschen.
Somewhere else someone posted that in 1400 six groschen could buy a cow, 300 a modest house. If that is true, a 1.2K noble saddle w/ 4 bags seems quite a bit overpriced.
That said, we know the economy is a bit iffy in the game…
Wow… that is way more than I thought
The KCD ecenomy or rather pthe prices had to be modified a bit as we use a decimal system. The 1 prager “hřivna” (253,17 g silver/metal) was 64 Groshen. One Groshen was worth 6 Bracteate (older coin) or 7 Nummi (newer coin) or 14 Heller or 28 Oboli.
The silver fraction in Groshen declined in time starting on 93% (Wenceslau II) as mentioned above (and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_groschen#/media/File:Prague_groschen_silver_content.png) but high initial silver fraction and most importantly the stability of it was the reason why the Prague groschen was accepted as stable currency all over the Europe.
I general the decline of precious metal fraction in coin was pretty common way to finance the government (you pull back 1000 coins, melt them and mint 1200 new ones with no additional silver) - starting in old Rome. But the people would notice sooner or later and adapt.
15th century Bohemia the cow was more between 30-50 groschen,workhorse 120,good chicken one grosch…but it is almost imposible to make comparison with present global economy. In medieval times prices were much more different and values of goods were heavily influenced by rather primitive agricalture and food preserving technology + how good/bad was the harvest, if there was an epidemy of plague or whatever pestilence raging around,wars etc.
For medieval peasant last gen smart phone would have very little value, same as price of the cow is no brainer for modern city dwelling people
I think Henry caused the prices to go up because he is always hungry lol…
If you haven’t figured it out yet it’s a bug they never fixed it they need to fix it there’s also features with the horses that aren’t available it’s incomplete