Talk:Red złoty

A fact from Red złoty appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 April 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the last Polish red złoty (pictured) were the so-called "insurgent ducats" minted at the Warsaw mint in 1831, on the eve of the November Uprising?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Red złoty.

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Silver content of grosz[edit]

This is a bit off topic - it's about the grosz, not the red zloty - but I do have a graph of the silver content of the grosz over time (from Tomaszewski, "Ceny w Krakowie w Latach, 1601-1795"). While it started at 3.2 grams of silver in 1300's under Casimir the Great, by the 1600's it fell to less than one gram of silver per coin. And kept falling. It's not directly about the subject of this article but it does show why the value of the Red złoty (which had a more or less fixed metal content) increased in terms of the grosz, as stated in the paragraph of the article. Should I put it in? Volunteer Marek 19:21, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a good idea, and we also need an article about Polish grosz. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There were several Polish groszes though. In regard to the chart - which is actually the reason why I haven't put it up already - there is some issue with the so-called "solidus" of Jan Kazimierz, apparently issued in 1664 which significantly dropped the silver content of the grosz, at least as recorded in Tomaszewski. The part I'm not really clear about is whether this solidus was just a new kind of grosz or a new type of coin or what. So I might hold off on this.Volunteer Marek 05:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Zloty system[edit]

Davies uses this term here, but nobody else I think does, and it's not clear what he means by it. Based on some other works, like Gloger, I think the years 1526-1528 saw a serious increase in the minting of gold coins in Poland. In particular, I am not happy with saying that that period saw "saw the introduction of the red złoty"; some others sources (Gloger, Frost) suggest that red zloties, meaning god coints minted in Poland, existed before. The sources are also not very clear on what exactly was done in that period, reform wise, and personally I'd rather thinkl that the "Zloty system" phrase would make more sense in reference to the late 15th century introduction of the zloty as a unit of accounting... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the terminology changed. Before a certain time "red zloty" denoted foreign florins or ducats in circulation in Poland. After the reforms of Zygmunt they eventually came to denote the domestically issued currency, although this naming wasn't consistent for some time (hence confusion in sources). The years 1526-1528 were a period of a monetary reform by Zygmunt the Old (you could probably write an article on just that), based, actually, on proposals made by Mikolaj Kopernik/Copernicus (who was a sort of Ben Bernanke for Poland at the time). So there was a "zloty system" introduced during this time by Zygmunt. The parities between the various denominations/types of coins didn't stick though. In particular the silver coins were generally subject to continuous debasement and lost value relative to the gold coins (this wasn't particular to Poland btw, in HRE it was even worse because of the decentralization of monetary authority) which more or less retained their gold content - though this actually predated Zygmunt by a good bit, going back to the Piasts and the feudal fragmentation (indeed, Zygmunt's reform was an effort to undue these developments, Kazimierz also tried). The observation that the bad silver coins tended to drive out the good gold coins out of circulation was actually was led Copernicus to formulate what came to be known as Gresham's Law (after the second guy to discover it).Volunteer Marek 05:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Can you come up with a small tweak to the lead, then, where I used that as a first date? Drmies (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many good points, some of them would be helpful in expanding the article - I haven't found good sources for some of the points you address. Would you have an idea on how to modify the hook at Template:Did you know nominations/Red złoty other than simply removing the 14th century reference? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:14, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is this source [1] which covers some of the monetary matters of the period. At the moment I can't access it but I can get it in a week or two.Volunteer Marek 03:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, before the reforms of Zygmunt "zloty" or even "red zloty" meant "ducat" or "florin" or "thaler" (taler), i.e. foreign gold coins, mostly from Italy. These were actually used throughout Europe (European states at this time freely used each other's currencies when convenient, since these were all silver and gold based). Zygmunt basically introduced a Polish version of the ducat - this 'red zloty' that we're talking about here.

Also, it might be worth noting here that this red zloty was a very high denomination coin. We're talking about the equivalent of something like a 100$ or maybe even 1000$ (later, after the inflation of the 16th century) bill. It really wasn't used for most transactions very much - that was still the job of silver coins. Even the... "non-red" zloty (mentioned in the article) was still pretty rare.Volunteer Marek 03:54, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the gold in Poland was imported[edit]

I think I saw such a claim in one of the sources, but I cannot find it now. This is probably relevant and would be worth mentioning. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]