In Old School RuneScape, coins appear as small gold nuggets, roughly cylindrical, and are stackable. Coin piles get larger as the amount of coins increase. For more information on the mechanics of stackable items in OldSchool RuneScape, see Stackable items.
Unsurprisingly, Alchemy spells cannot be cast on coins. If a player attempts it, a message will inform the player that "Coins are already made of gold." You can, however, turn other gold items like Gold ore and Gold bars into coins.
Terminology
Beside "coins, " the currency is also referred to as gold pieces, gp, or by some players, simply g. However, these alternate terms have seen seldom official usage in mainstream RuneScape since was replaced by . One of the only NPCs who say "GP" ingame is the brewer dwarf in Keldagrim. The reason given is that he prefers to associate with gold at the expense of proper terminology. Additionally, when the glassblower was added to Entrana, he always referred to coins as 'gold pieces'. Another instance that a player may find coins referred to as "gp" is when attempting to pass through the gates to Al-Kharid, right-clicking upon the gate will give the player the option to spend 10 gp to go through.
One thousand (1, 000) coins is often referred to as 1k; one million (1, 000, 000) coins is often referred to as 1m or 1mil. Both can be applied to larger numbers, for example, "10m" refers to ten million coins. More rarely, 1b or 1bil refers to one billion coins. However, as few players have this much money, this is rarely used.
Use as a trade medium
Coins are the most often traded item; players prefer to trade their services or items for coins more often than for any other item.
Buying gold
Some players purchase RuneScape coins in exchange for real-world money using sites such as eBay. Although players can potentially gain monetary value within RuneScape by such means, this method is not recommended for a few reasons:
- Rule #12 of the RuneScape website forbids the trading of RuneScape items for items outside of RuneScape. Doing so can result in a .
- Doing so is against the law in some countries. As your player and its items are the intellectual property (IP) of Jagex, you would be supporting the trade of "stolen" goods (similar in principal to buying/selling pirated software).
- The maximum number of coins in a stack is 2, 147, 483, 647 coins because RuneScape uses 32-bit integers to store values, which are unable to represent a higher number. Theoretically it would be possible to use higher values by storing them in larger data types like long (64-bit integer with a maximum value of 9, 223, 372, 036, 854, 775, 807).