How to get infinite money and it's completely legal in-game

[RavenStarver]

Okay.
If a gold piece (called gp from here on out) is a gold coin, then it's mostly likely the normal size of a gold coin, about the size of a quarter, weighing an ounce.
Well then just take 16 of them, melt them down, bam, one pound gold lump which is worth 2500 according to the book.

However, that isn't quite correct.
If we then look at the Adventures In The Northern Wilderness 1 we see the pirate cave adventure. In there it states that 150,000 one ounce gold coins is worth 4 million. Basic math tells us that each coin is then worth about 27 gp if we round up.
If that is the case, then melting the coins down into bars is STILL valid, as with about 500 gp you'd have about 16 1 oz coins which makes a pound of gold worth 2500gp.

Am I correct in this? I'd be really interested to hear what people have to say

[Killer Cyborg]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

[RavenStarver]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

I've thought of that, as the book states that silver can be used to mint coins worth multiple "gold pieces"
Maybe a GP is like a flake of raw mined gold? Some strange leftover term from the height of the Elven and Dwarven Empires that everyone just uses to describe money even though it's incorrect?

[Pepsi Jedi]

I think it's an attempt to take arbitrary numbers and trying to reverse engineer them in ways that the writer's clearly didn't envision. "Should they have' Ehh. technically yes, but we know Palladium seldom thinks that sort of thing out.

[kaid]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

Pretty much this. Many "gold" "silver" coins tended to be either plated or not 100% pure. Generally old coinage is valuable more for its history than its metal quality. Old trade bars of pure metals generally are the really major finds for monetary windfalls.

[Nightmask]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

Pretty much this. Many "gold" "silver" coins tended to be either plated or not 100% pure. Generally old coinage is valuable more for its history than its metal quality. Old trade bars of pure metals generally are the really major finds for monetary windfalls.

Was quite the plot point in the earlier Rincwind novels when he and others found out his traveling companions gold coins were actually pure gold compared to the coinage on their continent where you probably were lucky to find a coin with 10% of it made of gold for a gold coin.

[The Beast]

This thread does nothing to explain how to get infinite money...

[taalismn]

Market values may fluctuate. There's been rumors of DIMENSIONS of gold; the Shifters who found them and told about them were supposedly whacked to keep their location/access means secret/lost, in order to prevent the value of gold from collapsing.

Oddly enough, the same doesn't seem to hold true for silver, as silver has, in recent times, attained more value as war material than as a monetary standard.

[eliakon]

How to get infinite money.
Come up with a cute scheme that the GM approves and does not say Rule Zero "No" to.

There are dozens of loopholes and places where you can buy something that is more valuable if you take it apart/sell it else where/combine it with this other thing here/what ever. That's fine....the books were not written as an economics simulator.
If PCs with vast amounts of money is good for the game, then go for it. Otherwise the GM can simply say "Nope sorry, that glitch got patched version 2.03.07b" and the game goes on.

The only 'right' that everyone has in the game is the right to have fun. If something makes it more fun for everyone involved then it is good and should be encouraged. If something makes it less fun for everyone involved then it is bad and should be discouraged/removed. And unless your GM is getting paid to run professionally they are part of the 'everyone having fun' group.

[Dog_O_War]

This thread does nothing to explain how to get infinite money...

Don't worry Beast, I got you.

Step one involves gaining immortality; this is easy, so I shouldn't need to explain.

Step two however, is where things get complicated. You will first need to case a joint, like say a bank. After learning how that bank operates, you will need to gain some relevant skills so that you can be an inside man.

Step three involves a long-con; over the next 10 to 20 years, you will slowly gain their trust as an 'employee', all the while taking money from them every two or so weeks. Do this until you make your way via promotion to an HR position. Once you have obtained this HR position, you will then be able to 'hire' yourself, thereby being able to assume a new identity every 50 or so years so they do not get suspicious of your scam.

Boom - infinite money

[Blue_Lion]

Step one Make a hacker.
Step two hack the CS central bank and transfer all the credits to an account held by Nurni enterprises.
Step three pay the Nurni enterprises a kick back to not reverse the funds transfer and convert it to off world curancy.
Step four Move to a different dimension.

Not infinite because there is no way to get unlimited but that should be more money than you can spend in a few years.

[taalismn]

This thread does nothing to explain how to get infinite money...

Don't worry Beast, I got you.
(big snip):

And pray the IRS/FDIC(or their equivalent) doesn't send InquisitorsAuditor(Demon)s to check on you.
Or that your penny-skimming doesn't get picked up on by a customer who either a) has the means to become a supervillain to get back at the 'corrupt establishment', or b) is already a BigBad(a dragon, or an Altess accountant, Naruni salesman, or other high-heeler for instance) with the attitude and means to track down the source of the skimming and take MEASURES.

[Killer Cyborg]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

I've thought of that, as the book states that silver can be used to mint coins worth multiple "gold pieces"
Maybe a GP is like a flake of raw mined gold? Some strange leftover term from the height of the Elven and Dwarven Empires that everyone just uses to describe money even though it's incorrect?

Oddly enough, I started reading "The Wealth Of Nations" today, and it has a whole chapter on the history of coinage, and relative values.
In some places, gold coins only had value in relation to how many silver coins they were worth.
In others, silver coins only had value in relation to how many copper coins they were worth.

If you want more insight, I'd suggest reading up on the history of coins--it's quite interesting.

Another issue is that once coins/money became a thing, there were some times when a coin of a certain metal was worth more or less than its strict value as a metal.
Copper pennies in the US are that way today. If you have a pre-1982 penny, then it's got enough copper value in it to be worth more than One Cent.
Of course, it's also illegal to melt down currency for recycling or resale purposes in the US, so you can't legally just save up every copper penny that you find and melt them down.
Perhaps the PFRPG kingdoms have similar laws in place.

Either way, what you describe could be (if the GM desired) the result of an odd devaluing of Gold Coins (Gold Pieces) in relation to the metal itself, one that hasn't been caught/corrected by society yet.
On the other hand, pretty much any time there were metal coins that were worth a certain amount, there were people weighing those coins in order to see if they were either heavier or lighter than the official weight. They'd pocket the heavy ones, and sell the light ones. Or they'd fill down the edges of the heavy ones until they were of the proper weight (or lower) and pocket the gold dust.
(This is one reason why modern coins have ridges on the edges, to prevent that kind of filing-down).

Overall, I think that the most logical reason is that Gold Pieces are like modern Pennies. They might have originally been worth the weight of the metal (more or less), but after coining became a thing, and certain economic changes were made to society, the coins had their own value that was separate from their actual value.
After the metal became more costly than the value of the coin, the societies switched to cheaper substitutes.
A modern Penny is mostly zinc, I believe, with a thin copper coating that has almost no value as copper.
PFRPG Gold Pieces could be similar in nature.
If so, that would mean that clever players who found older coins might well realize that they're worth more than their face value.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Alternate method: learn create water and travel to a desert city

[RavenStarver]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

I've thought of that, as the book states that silver can be used to mint coins worth multiple "gold pieces"
Maybe a GP is like a flake of raw mined gold? Some strange leftover term from the height of the Elven and Dwarven Empires that everyone just uses to describe money even though it's incorrect?

Oddly enough, I started reading "The Wealth Of Nations" today, and it has a whole chapter on the history of coinage, and relative values.
In some places, gold coins only had value in relation to how many silver coins they were worth.
In others, silver coins only had value in relation to how many copper coins they were worth.

If you want more insight, I'd suggest reading up on the history of coins--it's quite interesting.

Another issue is that once coins/money became a thing, there were some times when a coin of a certain metal was worth more or less than its strict value as a metal.
Copper pennies in the US are that way today. If you have a pre-1982 penny, then it's got enough copper value in it to be worth more than One Cent.
Of course, it's also illegal to melt down currency for recycling or resale purposes in the US, so you can't legally just save up every copper penny that you find and melt them down.
Perhaps the PFRPG kingdoms have similar laws in place.

Either way, what you describe could be (if the GM desired) the result of an odd devaluing of Gold Coins (Gold Pieces) in relation to the metal itself, one that hasn't been caught/corrected by society yet.
On the other hand, pretty much any time there were metal coins that were worth a certain amount, there were people weighing those coins in order to see if they were either heavier or lighter than the official weight. They'd pocket the heavy ones, and sell the light ones. Or they'd fill down the edges of the heavy ones until they were of the proper weight (or lower) and pocket the gold dust.
(This is one reason why modern coins have ridges on the edges, to prevent that kind of filing-down).

Overall, I think that the most logical reason is that Gold Pieces are like modern Pennies. They might have originally been worth the weight of the metal (more or less), but after coining became a thing, and certain economic changes were made to society, the coins had their own value that was separate from their actual value.
After the metal became more costly than the value of the coin, the societies switched to cheaper substitutes.
A modern Penny is mostly zinc, I believe, with a thin copper coating that has almost no value as copper.
PFRPG Gold Pieces could be similar in nature.
If so, that would mean that clever players who found older coins might well realize that they're worth more than their face value.

Thanks! This is kind of what I was thinking.
And because people seem to bring it up I'm running the game right now. I caught this while pondering what a Gold Piece actually was. And the infinite money cheat is to just melt the coins down into bullion, trade it in for cash, repeat.

[The Beast]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

I've thought of that, as the book states that silver can be used to mint coins worth multiple "gold pieces"
Maybe a GP is like a flake of raw mined gold? Some strange leftover term from the height of the Elven and Dwarven Empires that everyone just uses to describe money even though it's incorrect?

Oddly enough, I started reading "The Wealth Of Nations" today, and it has a whole chapter on the history of coinage, and relative values.
In some places, gold coins only had value in relation to how many silver coins they were worth.
In others, silver coins only had value in relation to how many copper coins they were worth.

If you want more insight, I'd suggest reading up on the history of coins--it's quite interesting.

Another issue is that once coins/money became a thing, there were some times when a coin of a certain metal was worth more or less than its strict value as a metal.
Copper pennies in the US are that way today. If you have a pre-1982 penny, then it's got enough copper value in it to be worth more than One Cent.
Of course, it's also illegal to melt down currency for recycling or resale purposes in the US, so you can't legally just save up every copper penny that you find and melt them down.
Perhaps the PFRPG kingdoms have similar laws in place.

Either way, what you describe could be (if the GM desired) the result of an odd devaluing of Gold Coins (Gold Pieces) in relation to the metal itself, one that hasn't been caught/corrected by society yet.
On the other hand, pretty much any time there were metal coins that were worth a certain amount, there were people weighing those coins in order to see if they were either heavier or lighter than the official weight. They'd pocket the heavy ones, and sell the light ones. Or they'd fill down the edges of the heavy ones until they were of the proper weight (or lower) and pocket the gold dust.
(This is one reason why modern coins have ridges on the edges, to prevent that kind of filing-down).

Overall, I think that the most logical reason is that Gold Pieces are like modern Pennies. They might have originally been worth the weight of the metal (more or less), but after coining became a thing, and certain economic changes were made to society, the coins had their own value that was separate from their actual value.
After the metal became more costly than the value of the coin, the societies switched to cheaper substitutes.
A modern Penny is mostly zinc, I believe, with a thin copper coating that has almost no value as copper.
PFRPG Gold Pieces could be similar in nature.
If so, that would mean that clever players who found older coins might well realize that they're worth more than their face value.

Thanks! This is kind of what I was thinking.
And because people seem to bring it up I'm running the game right now. I caught this while pondering what a Gold Piece actually was. And the infinite money cheat is to just melt the coins down into bullion, trade it in for cash, repeat.

Doing that would eventually start lowering the value of the gold (or whatever resource they're using).

[kaid]

If one is going to cart home extra dimensional gold really the best place to do it probably is 3 galaxies. Get a mining ship find a nice asteroid get to work. Even if you throw away all the non precious metals most metallic asteroids will contain enough gold/platinum to equal a fair percentage of the total amount ever harvested on earth.

And even if you don't do it yourself gold costs or other precious metal costs in the 3 galaxies is probably rock bottom as those resources are not that rare if one can harvest asteroids.

[Blue_Lion]

Step 1 learn to time travel.
Step 2 go back to before Nurni enterprise was invented.
Step 3 invest in Nurni enterprise when it is founded and have majority stock options.
Step 4 return to the present and cash in.

[Blue_Lion]

If one is going to cart home extra dimensional gold really the best place to do it probably is 3 galaxies. Get a mining ship find a nice asteroid get to work. Even if you throw away all the non precious metals most metallic asteroids will contain enough gold/platinum to equal a fair percentage of the total amount ever harvested on earth.

And even if you don't do it yourself gold costs or other precious metal costs in the 3 galaxies is probably rock bottom as those resources are not that rare if one can harvest asteroids.

I would think asteroid mining it the water you and other life sustaining resources that are in demand fallowed by what is needed to build ships and tech.

[dragonfett]

Here are a couple of methods that I have thought of for "Infinite Money", non-spell casters need not apply.

Method 1
Step 1: Learn "Water to Wine" Spell.
Step 2: Collect Water.
Step 3: Cast spell on water.
Step 4: Package said wine.
Step 5: Sell packaged wine.

Method 2
Step 1: Learn Amulet/Talisman/Create Scroll (either 1, 2, or all three of them)
Step 2: Create (insert item here).
Step 3: Sell said created item.

Method 3 (Available only to those who can cast Temporal Spells)
Step 1: Learn Dimensional Pocket
Step 2: Buy items with multiple pockets (like Bandoleers and Backpacks)
Step 3: Cast Longterm Dimensional Pockets on all of the Pockets.
Step 4: Sell item.

This is just some of the many ways magic can be made to work for the caster.

[Prysus]

Okay.
If a gold piece (called gp from here on out) is a gold coin, then it's mostly likely the normal size of a gold coin, about the size of a quarter, weighing an ounce.
Well then just take 16 of them, melt them down, bam, one pound gold lump which is worth 2500 according to the book.

However, that isn't quite correct.
If we then look at the Adventures In The Northern Wilderness 1 we see the pirate cave adventure. In there it states that 150,000 one ounce gold coins is worth 4 million. Basic math tells us that each coin is then worth about 27 gp if we round up.
If that is the case, then melting the coins down into bars is STILL valid, as with about 500 gp you'd have about 16 1 oz coins which makes a pound of gold worth 2500gp.

Am I correct in this? I'd be really interested to hear what people have to say

Greetings and Salutations. Since you're discussing PF, I'll chime in on this one. You're likely wrong, or at the very least you're attempting to plug in values to variable unknowns with a high margin of error. If you'd like some added details, you can look at the PF Book 12: Library of Bletherad (LoB) pages 122-128 for some discussion on Palladium Currency. You can also look at these images from the Cutting Room Floor: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/images/Im ... rncoin.gif

1: Different nations have different values (and using LoB, with varying percentages of gold content, none of which are pure gold). So you'd need to figure out which nation you're taking the coin from. Then ...

2: You're assuming 1 gold coin automatically equals 1 gp. While this is possible to be true, it's more likely wrong. A gold coin can be 25gp (which would come out very close to 4 million if you had 150,000 of them) or even 100gp (for example). It's like saying I have five U.S. bills in my pocket. If you assume it's automatically 5 dollars total, you could be correct, but there's a lot of room for error. I mean, I could have five 5 dollar bills, or even five 20's.

3: We don't know weights of most of the coins pictured. The only one with weight that I'm aware of is the Old Kingdom Dragon coin, listed at 4 ounces, and worth 1,000gp (this is also considered a rare item, so hard to tell for sure). Though there's a printed version in LoB page 124 that states "Actual Size." You could always try to use that size with the known weight of 4 ounces, and calculate from there (if you want to do the math). That won't be a perfect solution (as different nations have different amounts of gold, see point 1), but it's a start. Using the Tier system for the Exchange Rate on page 128, you can figure that the Western Empire coins have a comparable gold content/weight, while Timiro, Eastern Territory, and Wolfen would have about half the gold content per weight.

4: Going by LoB, this actually did happen with Land of the South Winds currency with merchants, pirates, smelting the coins down for the base metals. In my opinion (based on reading the section) this is because oher nations viewed the currency as effectively worthless (a poor nation with low gold content). That was more a result of the nation's poor economy causing their coins to be valued (as a coin) in other nations though (at least from what I can gather) because the conversion caused it to lose about half to three-quarters of its value. So it's like going to another country and pulling a $20 out of your wallet, but they only value it as $5. So you can take the $5 you're offered, or smelt it down and get more for it (though not necessarily a full $20).

Anyways, hoped some of that helped. Farewell and safe journeys for now.

[Xar]

Buy low, sell high.
Hustle.
Provide excellent customer service.
Hire good people and treat them well.
Repeat.

But that's not much of a game.

[Alrik Vas]

Step 1 learn to time travel.
Step 2 go back to before Nurni enterprise was invented.
Step 3 invest in Nurni enterprise when it is founded and have majority stock options.
Step 4 return to the present and cash in.

Step 5: get murdered by time traveling repobots.

[Blue_Lion]

Step 1 learn to time travel.
Step 2 go back to before Nurni enterprise was invented.
Step 3 invest in Nurni enterprise when it is founded and have majority stock options.
Step 4 return to the present and cash in.

Step 5: get murdered by time traveling repobots.

Do not think they have that options but if they do fallow you you own them at step 3.

[dragonfett]

You think that they wouldn't have majority shareholder's assassinated to get control of the company?

[Blue_Lion]

You think that they wouldn't have majority shareholder's assassinated to get control of the company?

who is they?

It is bad business to for a company to kill the people that invest money into them. ln addition remember that you are a silent partner that lets them run the company so the people in charge after you bought it have only known the company with you as such. And most the company stock is owned by one person t hat is not a member of the Nurni race according to phase world.

So no I do not think they would randomly assassinate you for having majority stock to get control. They may take action if some one is trying to rest control of the company but you have always been there. I do no see assassinating people for stock as working or being a viable practice for nurni because the stock goes to who you leave it to in your will not the person that kills you.

[glitterboy2098]

if a shareholder is killed, their shares are inherited by whoever gets their estate in the will. an assassination plan would require manipulation of private legal documents to see any shares revert to the company or some other shareholders.

it would be much easier to manipulate the corporate structure to limit/remove shareholder power and put control of the company completely in the hands of the board of directors.. (these are not the same thing*), and then do some insider trading for the directors to buy back shares from the shareholders.

*shareholders are the investors in a company, but most of the time they have limited input in it. they just fund it and then profit from it's growth. the board of directors are the people in charge. the directors often have sizeable shares in the company, but that is usually more a function of them either having ponied up the funds to help the company get started, or just the fact the board of directors tend to have the highest salaries, and thus plenty of funds to invest.

[Blue_Lion]

if a shareholder is killed, their shares are inherited by whoever gets their estate in the will. an assassination plan would require manipulation of private legal documents to see any shares revert to the company or some other shareholders.

it would be much easier to manipulate the corporate structure to limit/remove shareholder power and put control of the company completely in the hands of the board of directors.. (these are not the same thing*), and then do some insider trading for the directors to buy back shares from the shareholders.

*shareholders are the investors in a company, but most of the time they have limited input in it. they just fund it and then profit from it's growth. the board of directors are the people in charge. the directors often have sizeable shares in the company, but that is usually more a function of them either having ponied up the funds to help the company get started, or just the fact the board of directors tend to have the highest salaries, and thus plenty of funds to invest.

With what you just said there would be even less incentive to do the plan as the share holder has just let the company run on its own since he help fund it. The goal was to make money not run a company. So i have a hard time seeing them go through an assassination plot to get rid of a share holder that has remained quite since the company was founded.

[glitterboy2098]

it does depend heavily on the company (some companies the shareholders get a say in the direction of the company, but it's more of a "come to this meeting, and we'll lay out what we plan to do, and get your feedback) but yeah.. killing a majority shareholder isn't going to net you much if the shares are all that are involved. on the otherhand, sometimes shareholders get to decide who is on the board of directors, at which point the shareholders can have an indirect control over the company, and covert powerplays like assassination or blackmail might be viable, even if only to move the ownership of those shares to a successor who might support a different cadre of directors (or to prevent the current cadre from being sacked)

as i said.. it depends on the company and how the company is organized.

[Blue_Lion]

With the time travel to the past to buy the shares and then returning to the future, that makes it a history of not voting with your shares. So there still would be no reason to kill some one that has has never took a hand in any voting. Taking part of running the company was never one of the steps it is nurni enterprises it makes money on its own.

I listed 4 steps some one said step 5 would be getting killed by repobots that would be no reason for that to happen if you just do the first 4 steps. Step four was return to the present and cash in, that could very well mean sale of shares, or just collect dividins every year no where was mess with how the company pays you one of the steps. Simply doing the four steps will not trigger a Nuni assassination attempt. The problem is step 1 may be impossible.

[Wise_Owl]

The Principal failure in the logic of the OP is the assumption on the size of the gold coins. Traditional Gold coins usually break down to a specific number of weight per pound. 72 was common for the Arabic Dinar if memory serves, and though historically Silver is a much more common unit for coins, even later periods where they were common would get you a certain weight per pound of gold, or possibly the historical equivilent in value of a pound of silver(which is typically around 1:16, which would get your one ounce.)

But the more important thing is that in most pre-modern societies the worth of a coin is it's weight in gold, you can assume if 27 gold coins are worth the same as 1 pound of gold, than each of those coins weighs 1/27 of a pound of gold.

Also, to be an economy nerd for a moment; unless you have something that cannot be replicated, everything you suggest will not lead to 'infinite' money. Any exploit will be replicated, decreasing it's value.

[Svartalf]

Let's remember that gold coins were small... a Spanish doubloon was like 6.8 grams, or between 1/4 and 1/5 of an ounce (0.218 troy ounces)...

[DhAkael]

Does it make me a bad man I saw this thread title and saw 'How to get infinite monkey and it's completely legal in-game' ?

[Svartalf]

Not as bad as if you had read "infinite nookie"

[Blue_Lion]

Does it make me a bad man I saw this thread title and saw 'How to get infinite monkey and it's completely legal in-game' ?

Just do not spank your infinite things.

[Ed]

Gold Pieces might not be pure gold.

I've thought of that, as the book states that silver can be used to mint coins worth multiple "gold pieces"
Maybe a GP is like a flake of raw mined gold? Some strange leftover term from the height of the Elven and Dwarven Empires that everyone just uses to describe money even though it's incorrect?

Oddly enough, I started reading "The Wealth Of Nations" today, and it has a whole chapter on the history of coinage, and relative values.
In some places, gold coins only had value in relation to how many silver coins they were worth.
In others, silver coins only had value in relation to how many copper coins they were worth.

If you want more insight, I'd suggest reading up on the history of coins--it's quite interesting.

Another issue is that once coins/money became a thing, there were some times when a coin of a certain metal was worth more or less than its strict value as a metal.
Copper pennies in the US are that way today. If you have a pre-1982 penny, then it's got enough copper value in it to be worth more than One Cent.
Of course, it's also illegal to melt down currency for recycling or resale purposes in the US, so you can't legally just save up every copper penny that you find and melt them down.
Perhaps the PFRPG kingdoms have similar laws in place.

Either way, what you describe could be (if the GM desired) the result of an odd devaluing of Gold Coins (Gold Pieces) in relation to the metal itself, one that hasn't been caught/corrected by society yet.
On the other hand, pretty much any time there were metal coins that were worth a certain amount, there were people weighing those coins in order to see if they were either heavier or lighter than the official weight. They'd pocket the heavy ones, and sell the light ones. Or they'd fill down the edges of the heavy ones until they were of the proper weight (or lower) and pocket the gold dust.
(This is one reason why modern coins have ridges on the edges, to prevent that kind of filing-down).

Overall, I think that the most logical reason is that Gold Pieces are like modern Pennies. They might have originally been worth the weight of the metal (more or less), but after coining became a thing, and certain economic changes were made to society, the coins had their own value that was separate from their actual value.
After the metal became more costly than the value of the coin, the societies switched to cheaper substitutes.
A modern Penny is mostly zinc, I believe, with a thin copper coating that has almost no value as copper.
PFRPG Gold Pieces could be similar in nature.
If so, that would mean that clever players who found older coins might well realize that they're worth more than their face value.

Yep. That's pretty much describes the bigger differences between currency and raw metals. The OP did not distinguish between the value of a coin (currency) and the base metal. They do not have to be the same.