On Feb 26, 2016, at 4:06 AM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 3:43 AM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:

. . . should drive the Traveller cost of refining gold to at most
about the current price of copper; something like 1 Cr/kg. . . .

Sure makes buying all those primitive potentates a lot easier for the followers of the Zhunastu School, don't it? :) 

The worlds all those primitive screw heads are living on had been colonized by the Vilani for at least a couple thousand years, at a significantly advanced tech level. 

Any readily accessible supplies of valuable metals had probably been mined out for a long time.