[Dr. Sivana]

Wafer thin or not, how can 20,000 coins be only 13 pounds?

That's over 1,500 coins per pound, or nearly 100 per ounce or 3.39 per gram if you want to go metric! A gram weighs about as much as a standard paper clip. 3 coins weighs LESS than a paper clip? The math seems funny.

[pepsi_junkie]

Wafer thin or not, how can 20,000 coins be only 13 pounds?

Let's check it out: Since I collect ancient coins, I happen to have a subscription to a service that lists auction results and a search of auctions for 12th century bishop coins yields this:

This is only a fraction of the results, and is only for that type. But you can see though that most of them, it turns out, are a fraction of a gram, typically between 0.5 and 1.0g. I can tell you that if you scan many more, it holds up that this is typical weight. So let's say average of 0.75g just to simplify.

A gram = 0.002204623 lbs. The author says it's estimated there are as many as 20,000 coins. So that's 20,000 coins x 0.75 g/coin * 0.002204623 lb/g.

This yields 33.1 pounds.

I'd say that your instincts are sound, they are indeed vastly overestimating the number of coins.

[Organic Panic]

Metric pounds maybe?

Government maffs?

Or crappy AI writing / translating

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, great info! It’s not rare to see ancient coins that are very small diameter, but yeah, the 20K does seem high.