[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
you do realize now where going to have to do a financial revelution as well as a magical one, don't you?

The transition could be smoother than you might think; at first, the only a few things happen: lead suddenly beocomes very valuable to mages, mages become more powerful, and mages get a new supply of gold. However, it is a destructive use of the lead, so over time there is progressively less lead and more gold in the system, making lead rare and gold common. Moreover, as people catch on that mages, especially the power hungry variety, are willing to pay well for lead (the process would return 95% of the weight of the lead in gold, so they would have much gold available for buying lead) lead is going to go up in value overall as people begin to charge more, and gold down in the same as it becomes more common. This would accelerate as magic becomes more commonly known, and after a while you'd get a gold/lead standard debate similar to the gold/silver standard debate that happened in the US a long while back. However, the above factors would continue to press the issue, and sooner or later people would start switching currencies, although there would likely be a transitional period where both made for perfectly acceptable currency. It could readily be a slow change, rather than a sudden revolution.

Besides, it may not affect MOTMA much; if only a few know the technique, it would cause no more impact than a few productive gold mines. The value of gold and lead would change locally, but globally things would stay about the same for a long, long time, unless the technique spreads.