Assignment:
In the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, the staple food is bread, as in all the other nations in its region. Bread is widely traded across national boundaries, as is silver.
In all these nations, bread can be purchased, using raw silver, at a rate of 6 loaves per (Troy) ounce. This price is determined by international market forces, and it is not influenced by the monetary actions of any individual kingdom.
Historically, the people of the Seven Kingdoms have used coins containing silver as money.
Before its government got involved in the country's monetary system, the Seven Kingdoms had coins that were produced by private mints. Often, these mints were owned by prominent nobles. One of them was owned by Tywin Lannister, the head of House Lannister, an extremely wealthy house that dominated the western part of the Seven Kingdoms. The coins produced by this mint provided most of the currency in the westlands, and they were very commonly used elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms.
Following traditional practice, the Lannister mint used monetary units known as "stars." Its most popular coin was a silver "dragon" whose denomination was seven stars. (Seven was an important number in Westeros: in addition to the seven kingdoms, the principal religion in Westeros featured a god with seven aspects.) These coins had a dragon engraved on one side.
The mint named and marked the coins in this way to honor House Targaryen, the house of the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, who governed them from the Iron Throne in the city of King's Landing. The symbol of House Targaryen was a dragon.
For many years the Lannister mint bought silver and minted coins, paying for the silver in newly minted dragons (that is, dragon coins), at a mint price of 18 stars per ounce. Its mint equivalent was 21 stars per ounce. So a dragon coin, which weighed half an ounce, was not pure silver.
The price of bread in coins depended largely on the silver contents of the coins. However, because of the superior convenience of coins in exchange, a person could buy 7 loaves of bread with three dragons.
1. a. How much silver did a dragon coin contain?
b. How much silver did a star represent?
2. What was the fineness of the silver in a dragon?
Note: The fineness of a coin is the percentage of the weight of the coin that comes from its precious-metal contents - in this case, silver.
3. a. How much did six loaves of bread cost, in silver in monetary form (silver contained in coins)?
b. How much less, as a percentage, did six loaves of bread cost in monetary silver, compared to their price in raw silver?
4. How much purchasing power (in bread) would a person who brought an ounce of raw silver to the mint have gained or lost by doing so?
5. a. How many dragons would the mint have produced if a merchant had brought in a Troy pound (12 Troy ounces) of silver?
b. How many stars would it have earned, as its gross revenue from minting these dragons? How many dragons?
6. If this revenue covered the mint's costs and gave it a profit of 11 stars, then what were the mint's costs, as a percentage of the total number of stars it minted?