Picked up this monster at the last Noble's auction last week, it's even bigger than I thought! This piece is from the period of the last gasp of the silver as money discussion. It's called a Bryan dollar, they were produced during the US elections of 1896 and 1900 to illustrate the amount of silver that should be in dollar if the government wasn't placing a higher face value on their silver coins than the metal content was worth. At the time of the 96 and 00 election the major issue was whether to return to a bimetallic system or base the unit of account on gold. It's a lengthy discussion to describe the economics at play but the core of the problem wasn't so much that some people wanted silver to be money again but that they wanted it as money at a fixed rate above what was fair exchange at the time. On the other side they wanted to keep silver in the coinage but at a rate near half what it was worth. Neither major political party wanted to keep silver as money at around it'sfair value because they were either fighting for inflation or deflation and not a stable monetary value. At any rate I present the so-called-dollar, which shows us how much silver you should have had in your dollar if you were being paid in turn of the century America, pictured alongside is a Morgan which was the amount of silver you actually got and a gold dollar which was roughly a fair weight.
An Australian dollar will buy you about 1.6 grams of silver, with the difference in weight it would be very roughly half the size of a 5c piece I think. Once upon a time a gold sovereign was 1, with the changeover in 66 a 1 note would get you a $2 coin, at about $370 melt value for the sov it tells you something about the inflation Australians have experienced...unless you kept your pounds in sovs instead of paper.
My grandfather pulled 3 sovereigns out of his pocket once and showed me. I wish I'd been more impressed and prescient.
