Copyright � 2026 by Shane
Tourtellotte
As theoretical as the underpinnings of time travel may be, once you get started it is a very practical matter. Preceding chapters have already given plentiful examples of that practicality, but it’s time to deal with that most practical of items: money.
If you want to accomplish anything among people in the past, apart from the shortest excursion, you’re going to need money, or at the very least some medium of exchange that functions in that society. The following two chapters will deal with the ins and outs of trading value for value across the years, but this one will look at the money itself.
You’re likely about to object that you’ve handled money all your life and that you know how it works. More than likely, you don’t. You know how money works at one point in time, when money has become quite homogenized. You have the main unit of currency, and you have smaller units of currency, one hundred of which add up to the main unit. This is true in a huge portion of the world, whether it’s dollars and cents, pounds and pence, euros and euro cents, yen and sen, or francs and centimes1.
Near-universal decimalized currency has its conveniences, but keeping you mentally nimble to handle other methods isn’t one of them. There are lots of times and locales in the past that will strain you in very stiff places. Consider this a stretching exercise.
At first glance, the money of Elizabethan England is almost familiar. They have the system that pertained in the U.K. within current living memory: twelve pence to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound. That’s where it starts, but it is nowhere near where it ends.
The shilling, not the pound, was the primary unit of currency: there wouldn’t even be a pound coin until 1583. In regular conversation, values will be given in shillings and pence, not pounds. Coins won’t be explicitly labeled with values: you’ll have to judge those by size and metal content. Silver coins start with the half-penny, and go up to the penny, twopenny, groat (that’s four pence), sixpence, and shilling. Gold coins begin at the half-crown, which is two and a half shillings, and rise to the crown of five shillings, the angel of ten shillings, the ryal of fifteen shillings, and the sovereign, which before the 1583 change was thirty shillings but afterward became twenty, meaning one pound2.
You’ll also hear of “moneys of account,” denominations that don’t have their own coins. The farthing (one quarter penny) is one; likewise the mark, at thirteen shillings fourpence or two-thirds of a pound. The pound itself was one of these moneys of account up to 1583.
You will not be limited to seeing or using English-minted coins. Foreign gold pieces will flow through fairly regularly, as one might expect in a trading nation. The Dutch florin is worth two shillings, the French crown six shillings fourpence, and the Spanish ducat six shillings eightpence, or an even third of a pound. The Venetian ducat and Flemish gelder come in at five shillings, equal to the British crown. The coinage of various European countries worked on compatible scales, making them reasonably convertible without having to employ moneychangers. At least, if you knew your coins, which you do a little better now3.
Rome is more straightforward, in denominations and in seeing less foreign specie at the heart of the empire. (Out in the provinces, especially eastward, it’s a different matter.) The primary units are the denarius and the sestertius. The denarius is worth four of the sestertius, which itself is worth four of the as, which itself is worth four of the quadrans4. Be ready for either the denarius or the sestertius being the preferred unit, depending on whether you move among richer or poorer Romans.
The denarius will be a silver coin a bit larger and thicker than a dime, weighing about four grams. Depending on whether you visit before or after about 40 BC, the sestertius will be a small silver coin or a larger bronze one. The as was a bronze coin before Augustus, a copper one after 23 BC. The little quadrans was bronze.
There is also the aureus, the gold coin valued by Augustus at twenty-five denarii or a hundred sestertii. The aureus was roughly the size of the denarius, though being of gold it weighed more. It was uncommon before Julius Caesar rose to power and started minting them plentifully5. As with the shilling and pound, the aureus (and its much later successor the solidus) took a long time to become the base unit.
If you cleave to the rich Romans, you may end up hearing about talents. The talent was an ancient measure of weight, varying among different nations, but in this context it means a Roman talent’s worth of silver. That came to 6000 denarii, weighing over 32 kilograms or more than 70 pounds6. The talent was another money of account, referred to as a measure of value, but not actually seen in a single object like a coin.
Japan of the 16th century was less advanced financially than the other two example eras, but they were on the move. The holdover economic system was barter-based, with the unit of denomination the koku, roughly 150 kilograms of rice (which is what a Japanese adult was estimated to eat in a year). Fortunately for your back, they had other means of exchange.
Coins circulated in Japan, but most of them were Chinese. This system, in place for centuries, was beginning to erode as Chinese coins were declining in quality. Some were brought in from Korea, Amman (today’s Vietnam), and the Ryukyu Islands. Japanese even began minting their own, in imitation of Chinese coins. The quality was poor, though, and the exchange rate reflected this. All the coins will be distinguished by having square holes in their centers, so they could be strung together for ease of larger transactions.
As Japan’s economy and trade rose, even in the midst of war, foreign specie was no longer enough to cover all the exchanges being made. Aided by exploitation of new mines, gold and later silver coinage ramped up late in the 16th century. If you visit the late Sengoku, or forward into the Tokugawa shogunate, you’ll see a monetary system you’re more accustomed to -- except for the shape. The gold coins ran to rounded rectangles, and silver to stamped bars. This time, they weren’t aping Chinese coinage.
The main unit of currency is the mon, seen with the copper and iron coinage. The gold and silver coinage had denominations of shu (worth 250 mon), bu (worth 1000), and ryo (4000). For most of the period, it will be just mon, and those coins won’t be reliably available. You might be better off bringing barter items on your trip to handle your expenses. I can help with that, too.
Footnotes:
I’m speaking of the Swiss franc, of course. The French franc has yielded to the euro and gone the way of the guilder, ducat, and Spanish dollar.
There are also the quarter-angel and angelet, with the same values as the half-crown and crown respectively. Having these different names like “crown” and “angel” for higher values is less uncommon than it seems. U.S. coinage had the “eagle” of ten dollars, and gold coins ranging from the quarter-eagle to the double eagle. Then there are paper currency nicknames like the “fin,” “sawbuck,” and “benjamin,” only one of which makes sense from the bills themselves.
If you visit Tudor England in 1560 or earlier, beware that the extant currency has been debased of late, its precious metal content diminished since Henry VIII. The older, intrinsically more valuable coins have gone into hiding, obeying Gresham’s Law. Rectifying this situation would be the man himself, John Gresham. As Elizabeth’s financial adviser, he had the queen call in and melt down the debased currency, reinvigorating the English economy.
The denarius had originally been worth ten ases and the sestertius two and a half, facts reflected in their names. A revaluation of the as around 140 BC produced the new figures. It was nowhere near the last or worst Roman debasement of its currency, but you won’t have serious worries about that until Nero.
Not with his head on them, though. He did put himself on the denarius, which was upsetting enough to those who thought the Republic still existed.
Our pounds. Rome’s weighed less, as I’ll mention again soon.
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