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Comment by _joel | Hacker News Reader

Anyone interested in this era/design would do well to look at other Railway posters of the age[1]. There's something so utterly charming about this bye-gone era. A lot of the original posters change hands for not-inconsiderable amounts of money and one can see why, true design outlasts the fashion of the day.

Those with access to BBC should also checkout the 'Age of Travel' episode of Antiques Roadshow that was on Sunday, very relevant.[2]

[1] http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0822pdm/antiques-roads...

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What currency is this? http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters/CollectionItem?o...

gns?

I was curious too - apparently it's a "Guinea", equal to 1.05 GBP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_(coin)

"Even after the coin ceased to circulate, the name guinea was long used to indicate the amount of 21 shillings (£1.05 in decimalised currency). The guinea had an aristocratic overtone; professional fees and payment for land, horses, art, bespoke tailoring, furniture and other luxury items were often quoted in guineas until a couple of years after decimalisation in 1971.[9]"

England initially had what was effectively three independent monetary systems, with three independent uses, though interchangeable and with exchange rates periodically re-fixed.

Copper (pennies) for retail purchases. Silver (shillings and pounds) for wholesale. And gold (guineas) for finance (and government) transactions. Kind of.

That's partially based on my reading of Adam Smith (who spends a tremendous amount of time on coinages) and partially my own speculation, though it seems to have at least some merits.

Keep in mind that pennies went down to the farthing (a quarter penny).

For labourers (ag, day, general, messengers, miners), annual wages were ~17 - 31 pounds/yr, roughly, as of 1700.

For some historical wages and costs:

http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlcar2/wages.htm

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