There had been, for example, a trip inside one of the factories * to exchange some odd coins that Jack had picked up along his travels and been unable to spend, as no one recognized them. In this room, men sat behind desks with books in whose pages were circular cut-outs made to hold coins – two of each coin, so both heads and tails could be viewed in the same glance, and each coin labeled with various cryptic numbers and symbols in different colors of ink. The money-changer paged steadily through this book until he found a page holding coins just like Jack's, though crisper and shinier. He took out a færy-sized scale made out of gold, whose pans, no larger than dollars, were suspended from its fragile cross-bar by blue silken cords. He put Jack's coins on one pan and then, using tweezers, piled featherweight scraps of marked gold foil on the other pan until they balanced. Then he put the scale back into its wooden carrying-case, which was smaller than Eliza's hand; did some calculations; and offered Jack a couple of Leipziger Ratsmarken (Leipzig minted its own coins). Eliza insisted they visit a couple of other money-changers and repeat the ceremony, but the results were always the same. So finally they accepted the Leipziger coins and then watched the money-changer fling Jack's old coins into a box in the corner, half full of assorted coins and fragments of jewelry, mostly black from tarnish. 'We'll melt it down,' he explained when he saw the look on Jack's face. Eliza, meanwhile, was staring at a wall-chart of exchange rates, reading the names of the coins that had been chalked up there: 'Louis d'or, Maximilian d'or, souverain d'or, rand, ducat, Louis franc, Breslau ducat, Schildgroschen, Hohlheller, Schwertgroschen, Oberwehr groschen, Hellengroschen, pfennig, Goldgulden, halberspitzgroschen, Engelsgroschen, Real, Ratswertmark, 2Ž3 thaler, English shilling, ruble, abassid, rupiah . . .'