As well as the enormous variety of particular changes in exchange rates in particular countries, which resulted from local circumstances, there were a number of longrun trends that can be seen right across Europe, which depended on the changing relationship in the supplies of gold and of silver available for coinage.

As silver became more and more available in the thirteenth century, its value in terms of gold dropped accordingly. When gold became more available after the 1320s, the value of gold in terms of silver dropped back. When for 20 years, from around 1390, and for a further 30 years, from around 1435, the availability of silver was greatly restricted, its price in terms of gold rose correspondingly, and when it began to become more freely available again in the 1460s, its price once more sank. The whole period from the 1320s to the 1460s was one of the predominance of gold, and the increased use of gold has already been touched on. The decreased use of silver, even to the point of its nearly total disappearance in some countries in the mid fifteenth century, is a separate, although closely related, phenomenon.

It was not the first time that the stock of silver had diminished in western Europe. In the sixth century silver had ebbed out of the west completely, and when silverpenny coinages began in the seventh century, they made a completely new beginning.