Although grain silver is used as the unit of water conversion, there will still be losses during the final melting and casting, so as usual, additional fire consumption will be levied.
Although Zhu Yihai understood what he heard, he also felt that it was very inconvenient to use it this way. Silver taels that were directly weighed had fineness problems. Since the mid-Ming Dynasty, the silver standard has been formed, and silver is used in large quantities. However, after all, the unit of silver is large, and it needs to be used in ordinary transactions.
In smaller units, it can only be cut into pieces and weighed for use.
To be honest, Zhu Yihai felt very inconvenienced when he saw the officials at the grain station pricking, burning, cutting and weighing the boxes of silver.
In fact, with the inflow of large amounts of foreign silver from maritime trade, the silver produced by the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and others was actually more advanced. These were made according to currency value, with regular appearance and good anti-counterfeiting marks, such as surface relief, protruding tooth patterns on the outer ring and other anti-counterfeiting marks.
scrape.
However, when these silver oceans entered the Ming Dynasty, they still could not escape the fate of being treated as ordinary silver, converted and weighed according to fineness, and eventually had to be re-melted into silver ingots.
An ingot of fifty taels of gold flower silver is recorded as fifty-three taels of silver; an ingot of fifty taels of precious silver is recorded as fifty-two and four taels of silver.
All kinds of foreign silver from Banren are also directly converted into grained silver according to the fineness and weight, and the fineness is generally slightly lower.
As for the copper coins, because the Fang family paid a lot of silver this time, they didn't use any silver coins at all. After further questioning, I realized that today's copper coins are very worthless.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, a thousand coins were exchanged for one tael of silver. In the Chenghua Dynasty, 800 coins were exchanged for one tael of silver. In the Hongzhi Dynasty, 700 coins were exchanged for one tael of silver. In Jiajing, with the influx of silver, one tael of silver was exchanged.
One thousand and four hundred coins were worth one tael of silver. After Wanli, copper coins became less and less valuable. In the early days of Chongzhen, one tael of silver was worth two to three thousand coins. By the end of the year, Chongzhen Tongbao was worth 5,500 coins.
One or two.
Common people and merchants are not willing to accept Chongzhen money. They are only willing to accept Jiajing gold-backed copper coins. Even the fake Jiajing coins cast privately by the people are far more popular than Chongzhen money. Twelve thousand coins are still worth five taels of silver and one tael of silver.
A discount of twenty-four hundred dollars.
Even the government has basically given up on copper coins, and levies grain taxes only in silver.
Although in the early years of Chongzhen, he issued an edict of fifty-five cents per penny of silver, this kind of edict that went against the real situation of the market was just like the treasure notes issued by the Ming Dynasty in the past. No one accepted it at all.
The exaggerated proportion of silver at this time was also related to the sharp drop in silver input. The Ming Dynasty had already become a silver empire, and it was silver-based from top to bottom. The sudden sharp drop in silver input caused a silver shortage in the Ming Dynasty.
As a result, the price of silver rose sharply, and copper coins became even less valuable.
As a coin issued by the imperial court, copper coins are themselves precious metals and have actual value. Therefore, it is normal for their currency value to fluctuate. However, if the fluctuation is too large, it means that the imperial court has lost control of the money.
In addition to facilitating circulation, the imperial court also wanted to collect money interest, so the value of the currency was generally higher than its actual metal value. However, if it was too high, private casting would be very profitable, and many people would take the risk of casting it privately.
money.
When private money is listed on the market, bad money will drive out good money, and people will save good money and sell bad money, resulting in less and less good money in the market.
