Chapter 1239 Baoquan
Over the years, the imperial court has continuously recycled the old five baht coins of the previous dynasties to melt down and recast new money. From the fourth year of Wude, Kaiyuan Tongbao was cast, and now it has been cast and issued for 26 years in the 20th year of Zhenguan. Limited to copper coins and casting efficiency, the total circulation is still not much.
It is also for this reason that the imperial court is willing to authorize the Luzon coins that were privately cast but of good quality and quantity.
"The imperial court has newly drafted the Kaiyuan Tongbao copper coin for the 20th year of Zhenguan, and the fineness is set at the ratio of copper six to five, lead two to five, and tin to ten."
"Jin Kaiyuan is gold seventy-five, silver twenty, and copper five."
"Silver Kaiyuan is silver eighty-five and copper fifteen."
The fineness of the new version of coins proposed by the imperial court has almost declined. The original copper content of copper coins has dropped from 68% to 65%, which is not the most. The gold coins have directly dropped to 75% of the gold content. Eighteen karat gold.
Silver has also changed from the original nine silver and one copper to eight five silver and fifteen copper.
"Wei Gong also knows that copper materials have always been precious. Although the imperial court has set the price of copper at 160 yuan per catty in the form of laws in recent years, the price in private can be much higher than this. Not a loss, but the actual casting cost is still too high.”
"Although the imperial court strictly forbids the destruction of coins and cast utensils, if ten copper coins are melted and cast into bronze utensils, they can be worth seventy wen. Even if the manual cost is removed, it is at least five times as profitable."
Money is an indispensable thing. If there is a shortage of money, people have to barter. This will inevitably affect the transaction and hit the economy. For the court, the harm of money shortage is quite clear, but money shortage It is not easy to solve.
For example, many dynasties in the past issued that kind of treasure spring when money was scarce, what to count as ten or hundreds, or to cast the money into small and thin ones. Yang Guang once issued white money, which contained too much tin and lead, and the money turned white. Small and thin.
If the value of coins is too low, the result will naturally be that those who hold the right to mint coins will plunder private wealth in a disguised form, which will inevitably lead to a large number of private minting behaviors, and the entire economic market will also be turbulent.
But if the value of the coin itself is too high, it is not only easy to lose money in casting, but also lead to the behavior of destroying money and hoarding money.
How to choose an intermediate value is very important.
At the salt and iron meeting of the imperial court, Xu Jingzong, who had been a transshipment envoy, mentioned that the coins should be readjusted based on the market value of copper materials to keep the coins roughly equal to their own value. The wealth of the people can also appropriately increase the profits of the imperial court's coinage.
The imperial court doesn’t treat ten coins as hundreds of coins, but they can earn fifty coins by destroying ten coins. Obviously, the value of the current money itself of the imperial court is too high, and the value of the currency is too low. This makes money more important than things, and also affects the market economy. Even affect the national fiscal revenue.
Therefore, the content of copper coins was reduced to sixty-five, which was not much, but three percent.
A catty of copper material is one hundred and sixty, one tael is exactly ten qian, and the copper content drops by three percent, and one thousand qian will reduce the amount of copper by three taels, which means a reduction of thirty renminbi. Although the amount of lead and tin increases correspondingly, the amount of lead and tin Much cheaper than copper.
Calculated, after adjusting to copper 65, the profit actually increased by about 3%.
The royal court’s profit from minting copper coins is about 10%, but the Qin family’s is actually more than 15%. Therefore, after adjustment, the Qin family’s profit from minting coins may reach 20%. Now the court wants to take 5%. Then he can still guarantee around fifteen.
Even if it is calculated on the basis of about ten percent of the imperial court, if an increase of three percent is made, the profit can reach nearly fifteen, and if five percent is taken away, it is only one out of three.
Gold and silver coins are low in profit, so this time they have been adjusted, especially gold coins, which have been reduced to seventy-five.
It turned out that the gold coins of the imperial court were not made of pure gold. Copper was added to make the gold coins stronger and more wear-resistant. At the same time, the price was marked according to the denomination, which was the so-called patterned gold, thus increasing the profit of coinage. After all, if pure gold is used and the market price is used, then how can there be any profit from minting coins, and the loss is still your own.
But the value of the gold coin itself was only a little lower than the face value before, but now the imperial court plans to increase the price difference this time, and this part of the price difference is owned by the imperial court minting coins.
"The imperial court will further prohibit the direct circulation of gold and silver and strengthen the circulation of gold and silver coins."
Denomination gold and silver coins have been in circulation for 20 years, and they have gradually been accepted by everyone. After all, although the actual value is lower than that of pure gold and silver, when the direct circulation of gold and silver is prohibited, as a currency circulation, the top It is more of a bad coin, but it can more replace pure gold and silver.
With the credit endorsement of the imperial court, allowing these gold and silver coins to be used to pay taxes and rents, and even allowing them to be exchanged for copper coins, etc., it naturally increased their credit. After so many years of use, everyone gradually got used to it.
Compared to weighing pure gold and silver, these gold and silver coins with gold and silver patterns are convenient to trade, not to mention various appraisals, weighing and cutting, and it is much more convenient to carry.
"The imperial court also plans to issue some small silver coins, which are divided into five jiao, two jiao, and one jiao. It is said that this was also tried and issued when Duke Wei was in Guangzhou, and the effect is not bad. They are all set to be silver seven copper three!"
The value of a penny of copper coins is too small, so it is okay to use it for small change transactions, but it is not convenient for slightly larger transactions. One thousand coins weighs six catties and four taels. Catty money.
The reason is that the production of gold and silver in the Tang Dynasty was relatively low, and if they were all collected and minted, the circulation would not increase much in a year. If more small silver coins with low silver content were minted, it would not only increase the amount of money, but also solve the inconvenience of transactions. question.
After all, a cow is like 5,000 yuan, and copper coins cost more than 30 catties. Five silver coins are enough, but a silver coin is worth at least one thousand. Although the actual value fluctuates, it is generally slightly higher than the official price, often reaching one thousand. Thousand and twenty or fifty.
In daily life, such as eating, drinking tea and buying vegetables, etc., it is too troublesome to carry copper coins, and it is inconvenient to bring silver coins for change. If you have small silver coins, it will be more convenient.
For example, a five-cent silver coin is equal to half a silver coin, worth more than five hundred pennies, a quarter is worth more than two hundred coins, and a penny is worth more than one hundred coins.
It must be more convenient to use this way, and by the way, the court can earn a little more because these small silver coins contain less silver.
Not only silver coins, in fact, the imperial court also planned to make some precious coins with smaller denominations.
The so-called treasure money is Baoquan, that is, when ten is worth twenty, but in order to avoid being unaccepted by the people, some silver is properly mixed in these copper coins, and then the treasure springs with different contents can be used as five or ten. , When twenty.
Compared to purely stealing money, the value of this kind of silver and copper coins mixed with appropriate silver will not differ too much from the face value. It is profitable for the court to cast it, and it is convenient for the people to use in daily life.
The new version of Kaiyuan Tongbao in the 20th year of Zhenguan has five kinds of coins: gold Kaiyuan, silver Kaiyuan, copper Kaiyuan, small silver Kaiyuan and treasure coins, with a total of nine currency values.
Through the adjustment of weight and fineness, the denomination is uniformly calibrated for use.
One or two feet of gold in the market is worth 13,000 yuan, and the actual gold content of a gold Kaiyuan is also worth more than 7,000, plus the silver-containing copper itself is also worth more than 1,000 yuan. When it is exchanged for 10,000 copper coins, the actual minting profit has increased to 15%.
The same is true for silver coins. After adjustment, the minting profit can be 15%.
The small silver coins and Dangshi copper coins have lower silver content, and their profit can reach 20. Although they have higher copper content and are mixed with silver, after all, their face value is Dang 5 Dang Ten Dang Twenty.
Yin Anguo smiled and said to Qin Lang, "According to the latest standard of the imperial court's nine kinds of coins, gold and silver coins all have one point of casting profit, copper coins have at least one and a half points, and precious coins have two points of profit. Five collections of coins from Lu Song, Duke Wei's profit from coin minting is no less than before."
It turned out that the Qin family minted gold coins at a profit of five per cent, silver coins at eight per cent, and copper coins at five per cent.
Silver coins have less profit, but they can be recovered from small silver coins, and copper coins have less interest, but they can also be recovered from precious coins.
"The benefits of minting coins are very high. Duke Wei is also the sole vassal of minting coins. Others can't ask for it."
Qin Lang just smiled, given the current strict control of the imperial court on gold, silver and copper materials, even if the emperor really made money furnaces for other families and allowed them to make coins, they would not be able to make much money at all.
The traditional method of the imperial court requires dozens of craftsmen to cast money in one furnace, and more than 3,000 guan coins are minted a year. According to the one cent of the profit left after it is turned over to the court, it is only 300 guan coins a year. Even if you open three furnaces, it's only 900 guan a year. Who cares about this amount of money?
What's more, even if you want to cast 10,000 guan coins, you need more than 40,000 jin of copper material. In the early days of Wude, the annual copper mining volume in the whole country was only about 200,000 jin. Therefore, the most critical part of coinage, you have to get Sufficient copper-lead-tin material, especially copper material.
But copper is monopolized by the imperial court, how can ordinary people get a lot of it?
For foreign vassals like Qin Lang who are overseas, they can dig their own raw materials and buy them from foreign countries.
One more thing, minting coins is also a high-tech job, which requires specialized minting craftsmen, but such craftsmen are generally monopolized by the imperial court. The Qin family had a private minting license before and had this technical reserve.
"It's too troublesome to hand over 15% of the money minted by the Luzon Qianjian to the imperial court. Anyway, if you come to supervise the minting now, why don't we directly hand over 50% of the gold and silver coins to the imperial court in the future."
With the guarantee of minted profits, Qin Lang no longer objected to paying this tax, but he was unwilling to hand over all the minted money to the court, because Luzon also needed coins to circulate, and if he shipped the minted coins again Going to Haidong and Southeast Asian countries, you can make another three to five points of profit if you change hands.
Yin Anguo obviously came prepared, pondered for a while, and then said that he could go to the court to ask for permission.
The matter is settled, and the atmosphere is obviously much better.
Qin Lang is also in a good mood holding nine new mother coins. According to the fineness of this new coin, the profit of the Qin family's coinage is still very good. As long as the raw materials can keep up, the Qin family can definitely add more coin furnaces.
With the current supply of materials, it is no problem to cast millions of copper coins a year. After deducting 5% of the handover to the court, there is at least one cent of the profit, which is a profit of 100,000 guan.
This business is indeed done.
It is necessary to prepare for the expansion of the mint. To cast millions of coins, the mint needs two to three thousand workers.
(end of this chapter)