Old money

The basic unit of currency of the premodern world was remarkably constant: a small gold coin weighing approximately four grams—one-eighth of an ounce—and about the size of a present-day American dime, appearing in various times and places as the French livre, Florentine florin, Spanish or Venetian ducat, Portuguese cruzado, dinar of the Muslim world, Byzantine bezant, or late-Roman solidus. At the current price of gold, this corresponds to a modern value of roughly eighty American dollars.

-- William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2008), page 19.