re: #77 sagehen

I remember reading something once about why gold, silver and copper (in that order) are the most valuable currency everywhere in the world, since forever, since long before any of the ancient civilizations had a chance to meet each other. It’s pretty simple.

Pull up a list of all the elements. All of them.

Now. Eliminate the ones that aren’t solid & tangible in your hand, the ones that can melt or evaporate at temperatures where people can live. Now eliminate the ones that are water-soluble. Or alcohol soluble. The ones that can flake or crumble. The ones that can rust. The ones that are radioactive and it’ll kill you to keep a pile of it under your bed. The ones that are too rare, the ones that can only exist in high-tech labs.

The three that are left, that even after you melt them at high temperatures remain themselves and be reshaped, are those 3. And their perceived value, everywhere, are in order or how easy are they to shape into the things you’d make out of them.

Bingo. That’s it.

If that’s really the case, why’s copper on the list? It oxidises, though less aggressively than most other metals. It’s toxic, too, though not radioactive. And platinum and titanium aren’t so rare as we thought in the past, though they’ve admittedly only been feasible to mine since the mid-19th century (and in titanium’s case, undiscovered until after the Revolution). Its big advantages now are more along the line of “verdigris, once formed, doesn’t eat below the surface”, “verdigris has a very aesthetically-appealing colour, though it really shouldn’t stay in contact with human skin for long”, and “copper is the best conductor of the ductile metals and most ductile of the great conductors, which means that it’s what all electrical wiring needs to be made of”. Those would seem good reasons for it to be bumped in favour of titanium (since platinum’s still rarer than gold), or bumped in favour of platinum, but with gold and silver each descending one level on the “precious” scale…