Location:Don Rosa / Currency market view Title: Scrooge McDuck's Currency Market View series: PHP* Artist:Don Rosa (All)
Media Type: Marker Art Type: Convention Sketch For Sale Status: NFS Views: 441 Likes on CAF:23 Comments:0 Added to Site: 11/4/2023
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Description
I was again at Baltimore Comic Con (9/23) and Don Rosa kindly continued my art project there :-) By drawing Scrooge's "Currency Market View" portraits, how old miser is thinking about our fiat currencies. Well, needing to say that Scrooge is following currencies very carefully, of course ;-) This art project started already in 2018 when I was thinking about a "holy triptych" from USD, EUR & JPY, but then extended it a bit idea when visited again in BCCs.
Scrooge is very puzzled now with the Philippine peso. In the past, during the 9th-12th centuries, locals used piloncitos, which were tiny engraved bead-like gold bits. They were really tiny, weighing only like 0.09 to 2.65 grams of (locally diged, not imported) gold. And then they went from one extreme to another: started using Barter rings, which were the size of doughnuts and not that pure gold. First you tried not dropping and losing piloncitos, and next; how to hide from robbers your Barter rings?! Then, during the Spanish era (after 1565), there was introduced Spanish silver peso and gold dollar, escudos, later machine-made silver Columnarios, locally produced Cuartos made from copper or bronze, their counterfeits, and finally bimetallic standard equal to Mexican peso, with gold and silver coins, and a bit later first paper money in 1851. During the short First Philippine Republic (1898-1899) was of course introduced a new currency (backed by the country's natural resources), which became automatically illegal after surrendering to the Americans. The United States naturally launched a new, theoretical gold peso, which was equivalent to exactly half the value of a U.S. dollar. When the gold content of the US dollar was reduced in 1934, this theoretical gold peso followed it, maintaining the 1/2 ratio vs USD until independence in 1946. During WW2 occupying Japan introduced fiat-Peso, aka "Mickey Mouse money" and parallel previous government units and local banks printed guerilla pesos. After the war, the Philippines transformed into the current fiat monetary system, and during the decades peso has sunk against gold, USD, and all the other hard currencies. Summa summarum: any time from the past history did not offer that good moment to hold local currency (whatever it then was), rather stay in something you know better, like USD or gold ;-)
This drawing is done on A3 size paper (30 x 42 cm, 11.7 x 16.5 inches), so it is about twice the size of what normal convention sketches are done (typically in comic book backboards). Liquid gold marker is for sure the best one for this kind of artwork.