Merchant's scale

A merchant's scale, or balance, was an appraising tool used to measure the weight of items.
==Description==
This small item consisted of balanced pans. Appropriate standardized weights were placed on one pan and the item being measured was placed in the other. If the pans remained balanced, the item being appraised shared the same weight as the sum of the standard weights. Merchant's most often used the scales to assure that precious metals were not counterfeits, but could be used to confirm the value of any item sold by weight.
A typical set would include an assortment of sizes of pans and weights. The scale usually weighed about and was sold for about 2 gold pieces in most economies. Aurora's Emporium sold an especially accurate, tabletop model intended for wizards' laboratories for 30 gold pieces. This set was advertised as being able to measure the weight of cricket's leg, using standard weights from to .This is false advertising; the smallest weight in the set is more massive than the weight of an entire cricket, let alone one's leg. Crickets weigh less than a gram.
==Reputation==
The merchant's scale was often used as a symbol of moral or ethical balance or of justice. For example, the scale was used in the iconography of the god Tyr, and the Church of Tyr even contained specialty priests known as scales. The god Amaunator sometimes manifested as a woman bearing the image of a scale on her dress.
The Ravenian Strangestars House had a merchant's scale featured on their coat of arms, flanked on both sides by an arc of stars.
Firbolgs used scales to cast votes within their tribes.
No wizard's lab was complete without a set of scales.
==Notable Scales==
; Balance of Belaros : A relic sacred to the god Tyr, which had magically hovering scale pans.
==Appendix==
===Notes===
===Gallery===
Brass Scales.png|A common set of brass scales from the Sword Coast.
Balance2.png|A common balance.
Tyr symbol.jpg|The holy symbol of Tyr, scales sat atop a hammer.
Priest of Nephthys.jpg|A priestess of Nephthys holds an ankh-shaped balance.
ScaleTyr.JPG|One of the Scales of Tyr sits holding a scale.
Grimjaws stormshore.png|A balance sits at the feet of a shrine to Tyr Grimjaws in the Stormshore Tabernacle, whose sculpture depicts him holding a set of scales from his stumped limb.
===Appearances===
===External Links===
===References===
Category:Tools
Category:Measuring devices
Category:Mercantile tools
Category:Brass items
Category:Items
Category:Items from Aurora's Emporium
Category:Items from Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue
Category:0-24 gold pieces
Category:Year of Manuscripts