From the Frontlines: Ursulmas XXX

At Ursulmas, I struck gold.

OK, I helped strike gold. A gold coin, to be precise.

Gold, unlike pewter, needs to be ‘hot struck’. This means that the metal blank needs to be heated (literally red-hot) just prior to striking. We used a three-man crew: one heating the blank (a little bit of antique gold found by a prospector with a metal detector), one holding the die ready to place it on the coin (me) and one ready to swing the hammer. We did two practice strikes on a metal called ‘merlin’s gold’ (which has very little actual gold) to get the technique right.

Why is striking gold such a big deal for a moneyer? Well, we don't get to do it much. Economics is a harsh master. Pewter, our usual medium for coins, runs around $30 a pound, give or take. Silver, the most common period metal and what we pretend our pewter actually is, runs around $30 an ounce.

Gold is currently around $50... a GRAM. That one tiny coin we struck had a metal value of several hundred dollars.

I did a whole bunch of other moneying stuff, including something new to me: making blanks by pouring pewter into round molds in order to make early-period coins. This produces a larger and rougher blank than the rolling/hammering process I’ve gotten used to, but on the plus side requires much less in the way of materials.

I danced with Emerald Rain, doing a stick dance with Misty (mock combat, each of us armed with two wooden sticks about two and a half feet long).