After comparing a lot of information, Ye Yuan learned that these silver coins were all standard fifty taels of official silver.
The fifty taels here are not the fifty taels today. There is a big difference between ancient and modern weight conversions.
The ancient unit of weight "liang" is completely different from the current unit of weight "liang".
It is not equal to the current 50 grams at all.
Similarly, the ancient "jin" is completely different from the current market jin, and is not equal to 500 grams.
The "two" in ancient times was not a very strict standard unit and varied between different dynasties.
During the same period, there were different standards such as "Fuping" and "Kuping", with slight differences between them.
difference.
If we take the most commonly used standards and compare them with current weight units:
The "Kuping Yiliang" in the late Qing Dynasty was approximately equal to 37.31 grams.
1 "jin" is equal to 16 "liang", which is about 597 grams.
As for what we call "jin" (500 grams) now, it was redefined after the founding of the People's Republic of China for the convenience of conversion to kilograms. It has nothing to do with the ancient "jin"!
As for the issue of compensation in the late Qing Dynasty, we cannot compare it with the thousands of tons of silver today.
Nowadays, all countries use gold as hard currency, while silver only has industrial and decorative uses, and its actual market price has been greatly reduced.
In the late Qing Dynasty, silver was the hard currency used in foreign trade in many countries around the world. In addition, the total amount and annual output of silver at that time were less than today, so its actual purchasing power was much higher than it is now.
When Ye Yuan was looking for this information, he also saw an interesting thing, which was how ancient people made change.
In the silver standard system of the Ming and Qing dynasties, "liang" was the main unit.
Money below two, cents, cents, and cents are quite common.
And silk, sudden, micro, fiber, sand, dust, dust, vague, desert, mold are rare among the people.
As quantifiers, these ten Chinese characters all mean tiny.
There are idioms in Chinese, such as silk, microfiber, micromo, as well as millimeter, shimmer, dust, etc.
Fifteen units below two are all in decimal.
Ten threads are one millimeter, ten strands are one thread, ten sands are one fiber, ten dusts are one sand, etc.
It is very inconvenient to use real silver. It has no fixed face value and needs to be weighed with a special scale (楥子).
"戥子" is a relatively accurate scale, with the largest unit being two and as small as cents or centimeters.
In addition to silver, it is also used to weigh valuable medicinal materials, spices, and pigments.
Therefore, it is often only the families of high-ranking officials and nobles who have trousers, and they are even made of ebony, ivory, etc.
There are also cast silver ingots with fixed weights. In the Yuan Dynasty, a large silver ingot of 50 taels was cast, which was called "Yuanbao", which was also the "treasure of the Yuan Dynasty".
Later this name was used. The shape of the ingot is with both ends turned up. In order to make it easier to wrap around the waist, it used to be said that "the waist is wrapped in thousands of dollars". This is how it came about.
There are also smaller silver ingots, twenty-five taels, ten taels, and even smaller silver ingots.
Use scattered silver to buy small items. Silver is relatively soft, so cut it with scissors and use it as a weight.
The fineness of silver is also different. The best silver is called "grained silver" because there are wrinkles on the surface. Poor silver is called "low silver".
Copper coins are used in normal commercial transactions. A small coin is half a tael, a large coin is five plants, and 120 coins is consistent. Under normal circumstances, it is enough.
Silver is only used for large-scale commercial transactions. If the silver is used for large-scale transactions, it will be traded at the bank bank, and there will be professional moneymen to inspect the silver.
As for loose silver, if it is used outside the bank, the general inspection is to bite it to check the quality and weigh it with your hands. On the other hand, the purchasing power of silver taels in the prosperous Tang Dynasty was 3,500 taels of silver. In the Song Dynasty, it was 3,000 taels. In the Ming Dynasty, it was 3,000 taels. The price is about 2,500 yuan.
In many costume dramas, there are scenes where you pay for a meal in a small restaurant with a silver coin, which is pure nonsense.
Ancient people generally used copper coins, and if their consumption was high, they would use silver. It would be inconvenient to carry a large piece of silver ingots with you. Maybe a corner would be knocked off on the road, and you would lose your food expenses for many days.
So what will you do at this time? Of course, I brought some scraps of silver, so there is another question, where did I get the scraps of silver?
The method is to cut the whole silver ingot into pieces and use it.
Many people will directly crush the whole piece of silver, or pinch off the small corner on the whole piece of silver.
When it comes to transactions, if it's a small market or stall, the transactions are basically done with copper coins, and people can't give you silver unless you are very generous and don't want any change.
But if you go to a place where you need to use money, most stores have scales, and places like this are of higher quality.
For example, some teahouses, restaurants, etc.
However, the fineness of the broken silver circulating in the market is not exactly the same, so merchants have to convert the fineness to calculate. If you meet some powerful merchants, some people can tell how much your broken silver is based on experience. So you can feel how powerful it is.
In fact, the fineness of silver pieces circulating in the market varies, and the fineness needs to be converted one by one. Of course, if the paying consumer cannot trust the store, he or she can also ask the Public Assessment Bureau as an intermediary to evaluate the fineness of the silver.
If an ancient merchant left local A and went to trade in another place B, and the silver he brought to place B to be cast in place A would be "illegal" silver to be used directly in place B. Then the merchant had three ways to use the silver cast in place A. silver
One is to find a silver house or furnace bureau recognized by the local chamber of commerce in place B, and recast the silver according to the local customary fineness and weight standards. For this, he needs to pay extra for the fire consumption and bear the resulting increased cost.
Another way is that he goes to the Chamber of Commerce in place A in place b to exchange money, and exchanges the silver he carries in place a into the currency prevailing in the local area.
Another way is that the merchant can use a bill number, bank draft, bank check, and money check, but he needs to pay the handling fee of the bill number and bank.
However, ordinary people rarely use large ingots of silver in their daily transactions. At most, they only use scattered silver.
This is also the reason why there are treasury silver and market silver. Treasury silver has the same weight and is not circulated, while market silver can circulate and can be cut into different sizes at will.
According to the algorithm on the Internet, the weight of the ingots Ye Yuan obtained was 1850 grams.
According to the current silver price, it is about 4 yuan/gram.
In other words, these ingots from Ye Yuan are only sold for 7,400 yuan each according to the ordinary silver price. There are 200 such ingots in these two large boxes, so they can be sold for about 150,000 yuan. Ye Yuan is a little disappointed.
But this is also calculated based on the ordinary silver price. From the perspective of antiques, the price of a silver ingot should not be this price.
Ye Yuan searched for the price of Yuanbao on the Internet again. The price of Yuanbao varied greatly. It was also fifty taels of Qing Dynasty official silver. Some websites quoted it at 30,000-50,000 yuan, and some websites said it could be sold for hundreds of thousands.
Ye Yuan doesn't know much about antiques, but even if the minimum value is 30,000 each, these ingots are worth 6 million, which makes Ye Yuan very satisfied.
Ye Yuan also took out some porcelain fragments found in the sunken ship, as well as the broken silver and copper coins.
It was found that these had been corroded by sea water, a lot of silver had changed color, and the words on the copper coins could not be read clearly.
Ye Yuan thought to himself that these were probably the pirates' coins that he carried with him. They probably had no value, so he threw them all into a big box in the corner of the study.
Thanks to: lianjianming book friend for the reward.
Today is the first day of bidding, and I feel very nervous at my fingertips. I have never written a book before, and I have never issued a VIP volume. I can’t wait to start coding this morning. After coding, I will upload it and take a look. Today at noon this Chapter updated in advance. The next chapter will be updated on time at 17:00.
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Lewen
