Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: Kykeon on September 23, 2010, 10:07:51 AM
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How much can I buy for an emerald sphere?
We often hear that it's a lot of money for a darkeyes , but how much is never said.
Maybe we'll be able to calculate the value of a gemheart after that (and since we know the pay of bridgemen and soldiers, the approximate gain for a high prince that leads a successful run :o)
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Depends which size of emerald sphere. There are three sizes as far as I'm aware, chip, mark and broam.
But I'm afraid I can't think of much to help with assigning values... Noting that we effectively have 30 different coins (10 different types of gem and three different sizes) and we've only seen a few of them being spent on a few occasions.
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...and I thought I simply wasn't paying attention when listening to the relevant passages. :-\
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From what I understood the "size" referred to the gem inside, not the sphere itself.
I expect a resurgent interest in marbles, should Kings cosplay ever properly take off. ;D
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From what I understood the "size" referred to the gem inside, not the sphere itself.
Can't think of a specific reference atm, but yes, it's stated that te spheres are all the same size glass spheres, but have different sized gems inside them depending on the denomination. (chip, mark or broam)
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I expect a resurgent interest in marbles, should Kings cosplay ever properly take off. ;D
I checked already, couldn't find glow-in-the-dark marbles. ;)
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I wish i couild use the spheres to buy this book hopefully I will be getting it this weekend ;D
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so, what's the denomination chart?
“This is for you,” Shallan said, taking out a ruby mark and handing it to Yalb.
“Brightness, this is too much!”
“It’s partially out of thanks,” she said, “but is also to pay you to stay here and wait for a few hours, in case I return.”
“Wait a few hours for a firemark? That’s wages for a week’s sailing!”
Diamond marks, each worth five diamond chips. A single chip would buy a loaf of bread.
A sapphire sphere was worth about twenty-five times a diamond one. As Kaladin made one diamond mark a day, a skymark was worth as much as Kaladin made in half a month. Of course, a common darkeyed soldier earned five clearmarks a day, which would make this a week’s wages to them.
Those are some long months. 50 days. Weeks are 5 days.
It was five diamond marks to a garnet.
An emerald broam was the largest denomination of sphere, worth a thousand diamond chips. Ten of them was more than her trip to Kharbranth had cost by several magnitudes!
Kaladin looked down at the sphere. An emerald chip. More than he normally earned in two weeks.
He would earn 10 clearmarks in 2 weeks (if you include his bribe to Gaz, 8, if you include income from selling knobweed sap, considerably more)
This single emerald broam was worth what a bridgeman slave would make in two hundred days.
If what were told earlier was true, shouldn't it be exactly what a bridgeman makes in 200 days?
There, she used all her remaining spheres to fill the oversized goblet lamp. To get enough light, she was forced to use spheres of all nine colors and all three sizes, so the illumination was patchy and varied.
Despite all the various denominations, How many have we seen used so far? And does that quote mean that only 9 and not 10 gems are used in money?
so, a chip is worth 1/5 of it's respective mark. Is a broam worth 5x what a mark is? That would put an emerald chip at 8 clearmarks... And it would put the 100 diamond broams at 2.5 emerald broams. I can't decide if these sound right or not. As far as the worth of an emerald broam: 1000 loaves of bread. A slave is 1.5-3 emerald broams, depending on quality.
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I expect a resurgent interest in marbles, should Kings cosplay ever properly take off. ;D
I checked already, couldn't find glow-in-the-dark marbles. ;)
Few ways to trick around this... for instance, a pouch of marbles with a small, battery-powered LED lamp at the bottom, the glass should reflect and refract the light around in fun ways in there. Only works while they're in the pouch, of course...
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There's probably enough info in the book for you to figure out most of the spheres value chart.
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I expect a resurgent interest in marbles, should Kings cosplay ever properly take off. ;D
I checked already, couldn't find glow-in-the-dark marbles. ;)
Few ways to trick around this... for instance, a pouch of marbles with a small, battery-powered LED lamp at the bottom, the glass should reflect and refract the light around in fun ways in there. Only works while they're in the pouch, of course...
Or even better -- lasers!
http://laserpointerforums.com/f64/fs-glow-marble-mini-light-project-parts-44252.html
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If you use a black light, then Vaseline Uranium marbles glow in the dark...plenty of them on sale on Ebay. Not too expensive, either, but they just glow...they don't have a color chip in the middle, and I'd expect the chips would glow the color of their gemstone.
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so, what's the denomination chart?
Diamond marks, each worth five diamond chips. A single chip would buy a loaf of bread.
A sapphire sphere was worth about twenty-five times a diamond one. As Kaladin made one diamond mark a day, a skymark was worth as much as Kaladin made in half a month. Of course, a common darkeyed soldier earned five clearmarks a day, which would make this a week’s wages to them.
Those are some long months. 50 days. Weeks are 5 days.
It was five diamond marks to a garnet.
An emerald broam was the largest denomination of sphere, worth a thousand diamond chips. Ten of them was more than her trip to Kharbranth had cost by several magnitudes!
Kaladin looked down at the sphere. An emerald chip. More than he normally earned in two weeks.
He would earn 10 clearmarks in 2 weeks (if you include his bribe to Gaz, 8, if you include income from selling knobweed sap, considerably more)
This single emerald broam was worth what a bridgeman slave would make in two hundred days.
If what were told earlier was true, shouldn't it be exactly what a bridgeman makes in 200 days?
There, she used all her remaining spheres to fill the oversized goblet lamp. To get enough light, she was forced to use spheres of all nine colors and all three sizes, so the illumination was patchy and varied.
Despite all the various denominations, How many have we seen used so far? And does that quote mean that only 9 and not 10 gems are used in money?
so, a chip is worth 1/5 of it's respective mark. Is a broam worth 5x what a mark is? That would put an emerald chip at 8 clearmarks... And it would put the 100 diamond broams at 2.5 emerald broams. I can't decide if these sound right or not. As far as the worth of an emerald broam: 1000 loaves of bread.
Hmm, where do you get the 8 from? I didn't follow where that appeared from.
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Hmm, where do you get the 8 from? I didn't follow where that appeared from.
I'm assuming a broam is worth 5 times what a mark is. I can't find a conversion rate in the book. If so, an emerald broam would be worth 25 emerald chips. (emerald broam = 200 diamond marks)/25 = 8 diamond marks, or 40 diamond chips.
Topaz and ruby and zircon only show up a few times, so it's tough to figure out what they're worth.
Lamaril waved Gaz over, so he reluctantly approached. Then he took a sphere out of his pouch and passed it over. A topaz mark. He hated losing it. He always hated losing money.
“You owe me twice as much as this,” Lamaril noted, raising the sphere up to look through it as it sparkled in the sunlight.
Kaladin patted the bridgeman on the shoulder, then left him to his work, surrounded by a small ring of topaz chips; Kaladin had gotten permission to bring them, explaining his men needed light to work on the armor.
So Gaz was paying Lamaril in topaz marks, so I would think they'd be a bit more valuable. But it's not too odd for Kaladin to have topaz chips?
“This is for you,” Shallan said, taking out a ruby mark and handing it to Yalb.
“Brightness, this is too much!”
“It’s partially out of thanks,” she said, “but is also to pay you to stay here and wait for a few hours, in case I return.”
“Wait a few hours for a firemark? That’s wages for a week’s sailing!”
I'd assume a week's worth of wages for a sailor is less than a week's worth of wages for a soldier, so rubies are probably somewhere between garnets and sapphires.
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It seems like if Kaladin made 10 clearmarks in 2 weeks, and an emerald chip is "more than he normally made in 2 weeks" then an emerald chip would have to be worth more than 8 clearmarks. Or are you assuming he's referencing his net income after the bribe?
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It seems like if Kaladin made 10 clearmarks in 2 weeks, and an emerald chip is "more than he normally made in 2 weeks" then an emerald chip would have to be worth more than 8 clearmarks. Or are you assuming he's referencing his net income after the bribe?
It bothers me too. I can't find any place where the broam/mark conversion rate is mentioned specifically. I'm just assuming its the same as the mark/chip conversion rate.
If it was 4 marks to a broam, then emerald marks would be worth 50 diamond marks, and emerald chips would be worth 10 diamond chips. Which I still don't like.
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I expect a resurgent interest in marbles, should Kings cosplay ever properly take off. ;D
I checked already, couldn't find glow-in-the-dark marbles. ;)
Just google it (http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=glow-in-the-dark+marbles)
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If you can think of it, somewhere on the internet there's a website for it.
Glow-in-the-dark marbles seems like an easy one.
If you use a black light, then Vaseline Uranium marbles glow in the dark...plenty of them on sale on Ebay. Not too expensive, either, but they just glow...they don't have a color chip in the middle, and I'd expect the chips would glow the color of their gemstone.
Man, in cosplay you gotta work with what you can work with. One of the coolest things I saw at Dragon were the Mistborn with the vials of metal suspended in alcohol... sure, it was all Goldshläger, but that's not quite the point. It was little bits of gold you could drink.
Someone comes up at the next Con with a pouch full of glowing spheres, and the last thing I'm likely to say is, "nice, but they really ought to glow different colors, and only in the little gems in the center, and aren't these a bit too large or small?"
Hell no! Glowy spheres! Kick-ass!
I like the idea of using a tiny black-light at the bottom of the pouch, but do they make tiny little LED UV lights? 'Cause I figured that's what you'd need to use, something small but powerful that can be placed at the bottom to shine up and through. Of course, they effect will be lost if you take the spheres out...
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I just finished the Wiki article on currency (http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Currency) a few days ago. Best quote I could find on the value of broams was that an emerald broam was worth 'hundreds of lesser spheres'. Of course, the denomination and gem type of those lesser spheres is not specified, so that doesn't help much.
As to the 9 gem types used for currency...was able to verify 8 of the 9. Not sure if heliodor or smokestone is the 9th.
Also, I have no idea how the gems relate to each other beside the fact that emerald is highest, diamond is lowest, and since a garnet is worth five times a diamond, it's probably the next-lowest. Sapphire is 25x a diamond, but not sure if there are other gems in between sapphire and garnet.
Also, many spheres are flattened on one side so they won't roll away, so they wouldn't make very good marbles.
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I agree, since she was talking about emerald broams specifically, that it's not a particularly useful quote. I think broams are probably worth a 4 or 5 times their respective marks, but that still makes Kaladin's remark about an emerald chip being worth more than 2 weeks of wages sound wrong to me. Unless he's talking about after Gaz's bribe, then 4x would work fine.
If a ruby mark is equal to a weeks worth of wages for a sailor, and a sapphire mark is a week's worth of wages for a soldier, I really think ruby would be between sapphire and garnet.
I mean, aren't soldiers usually better paid than sailors?
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Looking at the quote saying that Shallan used all nine colors of sphere, I think she means actual color, I don't think she counts white in that, so that would be nine colors plus white, and so we're back to ten types. This really makes the most sense. I mean, why wouldn't they use all ten types of gem as currency? Why exclude one?
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Looking at the quote saying that Shallan used all nine colors of sphere, I think she means actual color, I don't think she counts white in that, so that would be nine colors plus white, and so we're back to ten types. This really makes the most sense. I mean, why wouldn't they use all ten types of gem as currency? Why exclude one?
It might have something to do with Talenel.
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I've trying to figure out the sphere value system, here's what i've come up with so far.
diamond is the cheapest gem
emerald is the most valuable
garnet is worth 5 x diamond
sapphire is worth 25 x diamond
emerald is the most valuable gem, and is worth 40 x diamond
therefore, emerald is worth 1.6 x sapphire (i think this would make sapphire the 9th most valuable)
ruby is probably a bit less than sapphire (a ruby mark is a week's pay for a sailor, a sapphire mark is a week's pay for a soldier) but i can't imagine the difference is huge, so ruby is probably 8th or 7th most valuable
when Shallan thinks about 9 colors of gems, i'm sure she includes diamonds. But, garnet and ruby might be considered to be the same color. Also, we don't know what color the zircons in this system are (real zircons have lots of colors).
it's implied that a gem's value is directly related to the usefulness of what can be Soulcast with it (emeralds are valuable because they can make food). but that doesn't totally make sense. if that's true, why are diamonds, which make glass/crystal/quartz, so much less valuable than the rest? why are sapphires, which make air, of all things, the 2nd most valuable?
also, the gems themselves never get directly used in Soulcasting, because they can't be put into Soulcasters. So, they must just transfer their stormlight to the gems set into Soulcasters. Does this mean that stormlight can only be transferred between the same gems? or is the whole value-related-to-Soulcasting thing a mistake?
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Ah, you're saying things backward, you mean that you think sapphire is the 2nd most valuable, and ruby is 3rd. I don't agree with that, because there's too much space between their supposed values, given the wide variety of gems that we have. On the other hand, when Shallan was buying those books, the man responded with "Two emerald, three sapphire" which would be most natural if, like you said, it was the next most valuable denomination.
I also assume that soulcasting usefulness isn't the only thing determining relative worth of the gems, their respective rarities are probably a big part as well.
So far I'm not a big fan of the currency system in SA, look at US currency for example. we've got pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, $1 bills, $5 bills, $10 bills, $20 bills, $50, and $100. So, that's 10 different denominations (no one uses $2 bills, or dollar coins), the difference between a penny and a hundred dollar bill is x10000. In SA we've got 27 or 30 different denominations, and the difference between emerald broams and diamond chips is only x1000. It seems to work fine, but it's pretty cluttered.
Looking at the quote saying that Shallan used all nine colors of sphere, I think she means actual color, I don't think she counts white in that, so that would be nine colors plus white, and so we're back to ten types. This really makes the most sense. I mean, why wouldn't they use all ten types of gem as currency? Why exclude one?
It might have something to do with Talenel.
I don't think the Heralds advertised after that last Desolation that they'd left one of their own to an endless cycle of torture. Besides the readers, I think only the other Heralds, Hoid, and maybe a few others knew about Taln.
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I don't think the Heralds advertised after that last Desolation that they'd left one of their own to an endless cycle of torture. Besides the readers, I think only the other Heralds, Hoid, and maybe a few others knew about Taln.
I wonder why he is called the 'bearer of all agonies', if no one knows or even has a clue. It could have been suppressed during the Hierocracy, but I'm guessing the Radiants probably had a clue, and that the Heralds' desertion had something to do with the Recreance (though I think the human condition likely had something to do with it as well).
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I did not notice that Talenelat was called that. Found it in the book after looking just now. Maybe people do know then? Or perhaps they only know part of his story.
I was thinking of the bookseller again, with the conversion rate we're guessing at right now, 2 emeralds 3 sapphires, could also be expressed 3 emeralds 1 sapphire 4 garnet or (3.875 emeralds)
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I forget where it say this, but somewhere it states that the value for the gems is based on Soulcasting properties. The part that gets me is one character (I think Shallan) thinks about how diamonds are one of lowest value gems due to their lack of use in Soulcasting. That just kind of stuck with me because it's the opposite of real life.
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no one uses $2 bills
My uncle sends me a $2 bill in his card every birthday. XP
I wonder why he is called the 'bearer of all agonies'
Can we get a page reference on that? I don't recall that at all and I'm fairly good at picking up stuff like that. (fairly, not perfect, I could've missed it)
when Shallan thinks about 9 colors of gems, i'm sure she includes diamonds. But, garnet and ruby might be considered to be the same color. Also, we don't know what color the zircons in this system are (real zircons have lots of colors).
Good point, I forgot about that.
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It's in chapter 6.
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If you can think of it, somewhere on the internet there's a website for it.
Glow-in-the-dark marbles seems like an easy one.
If you use a black light, then Vaseline Uranium marbles glow in the dark...plenty of them on sale on Ebay. Not too expensive, either, but they just glow...they don't have a color chip in the middle, and I'd expect the chips would glow the color of their gemstone.
Man, in cosplay you gotta work with what you can work with. One of the coolest things I saw at Dragon were the Mistborn with the vials of metal suspended in alcohol... sure, it was all Goldshläger, but that's not quite the point. It was little bits of gold you could drink.
Someone comes up at the next Con with a pouch full of glowing spheres, and the last thing I'm likely to say is, "nice, but they really ought to glow different colors, and only in the little gems in the center, and aren't these a bit too large or small?"
Hell no! Glowy spheres! Kick-ass!
I like the idea of using a tiny black-light at the bottom of the pouch, but do they make tiny little LED UV lights? 'Cause I figured that's what you'd need to use, something small but powerful that can be placed at the bottom to shine up and through. Of course, they effect will be lost if you take the spheres out...
Yup: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3107633
Hmm ... my sister is taking a glass-working class, I think I need to discuss a few things with her :-)
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no one uses $2 bills
My uncle sends me a $2 bill in his card every birthday. XP
And if you've ever worked a cash register, you'll find that people still use $2 bills, $1 coins, and $.50 pieces. I have an unreasonable distaste for those people.
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I've worked a cash register fairly often. The "no one" was an exaggeration. I actually found a 5 dollar bill silver certificate once.
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I've also worked a cash register for a good number of years - 14, actually, at a place that only took cash for 12 of those years - and I find that $2 bills are rare, and 50¢ pieces as well, but I got the $1 coins often. Susan B.s don't come in nearly as often as the gold ones. It may be that the gold ones are only common in my area because it's a casino tourist area. I've gotten casino chips for tips before.
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Bit confused here, you got tips working as a cashier?
I remember someone telling me that the a parking lot they went to gave the dollar coins as change. (Automated machine, I assume.) The dollar coins are a bit more widely distributed than Susan B.
But on the main topic, do you think a broam is worth 3, 4, or 5 times a mark? I think 5 is most likely, but 4 isn't out of the question, the only reason I think 3 at all is because Kaladin considered an emerald chip to be worth more than he made in two weeks.
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Bit confused here, you got tips working as a cashier?
No, I had to run a cash register while waiting tables. Had to clear my own tables and wash my own dishes, too, except for very rare occasions when we had a dishwasher. I also dealt with a lot more money as a manager, but I often had to wait tables while doing that too (though admittedly it was more often cooking). Hell, I have been the only person in the place doing all of it. ;D
An emerald broam is worth a thousand diamond chips. That's the best I can do...
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Great work so far, everyone. :o
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I forget where it say this, but somewhere it states that the value for the gems is based on Soulcasting properties. The part that gets me is one character (I think Shallan) thinks about how diamonds are one of lowest value gems due to their lack of use in Soulcasting. That just kind of stuck with me because it's the opposite of real life.
Just throwing this out there:
In a world where there are near-constant violent storms, don't you think the value of a shatter-pron substance would drop?
To me, it seemed like glass was more a luxury item, therefore, the demand for it would be fairly low. Whereas creating food is probably the most highly sought after form of soulcasting.