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.

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 scaled.

Notable Scales

 * Balance of Belaros : A relic sacred to the god Tyr, which had magically hovering scale pans.