Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.

Is there a type of currency in middle earth?
Whilst in the car with my mum we started talking about LOTR (as always lol) and we wonderd what the currency was, we know that Bilbo had gold and treasures but what were they, were they jewls and gold blocks etc only? or were they coins?

What wages does Sam get or Rosy or the Gaffer? I imagined them paying by trade aka a bag of carrots for some potatoes, but then what would they pay for their good old ale with?

And elves? where do they get their items? Argos4elves?lol but really, how do they afford things? surly there must be a form of currency in at least Rohan and Gondor?

Currency- Gold coins, silver coins. But trading would also work, 'these three sheep for your cow' etc etc.

Bilbos treasure is just gold coins...jewels....armour etc etc

but there is no form of actual currnecy? E.G Sterling, dollar, Franc Etc

Not thats mentioned

Just think of ancient britain and europe, their currency was gold...silver etc etc

Its just like that


I say etc etc too much.

I haven't seen or read much dealing with money in LotR. It seems most ppl pay with services or weapons (like Eol giving his swords to Thingle, i think )

Coins get specifically mentioned by JRRT on a few occasions - in the Fellowship

"There was plenty of everything left for Frodo. And, of course, all the chief treasures, as well as the books, pictures, and more than enough furniture, were left in his possession. There was, however, no sign nor mention of money or jewellery: not a penny-piece or a glass bead was given away. "


"When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading. Bilbo gave a few pennies away; but not a single squib or cracker was forthcoming, to the disappointment of the onlookers. "


" Bill Ferny's price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony's value in those pans. It proved to be a bony, underfed, and dispirited animal; but it did not look like dying just yet. Mr. Butterbur paid for it himself, and offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals. He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him, and being cheated by Bill Ferny made it harder to bear. "


And from the Hobbit:


"They did not care tuppence about the butterflies, and were only made more angry when he told them of the beautiful breeze, which they were too heavy to climb up and feel. "


As to what they looked like - here is a picture of a Shire 1402 penny minted by master Will Whitfoot, the legendary coin maker of the shire.

how bout spliffs??

Q=
How much would you have to pay for a pint of ale at the prancing pony?
I noticed in the movie pippen just came up to the bar and got one. How do you pay? and how much would it be equal to in american money? surly the ale isn't free?

I've wonderd about this alot too aniron

Pip gave the guy his credit card.

Middle Earth Express

Melkard

I meant to post this earlier - a smattering of my nerdy shire coin collection.

Dont think there was a curreny ie instead of a Deutchmark we have a "riddermark"

as people said, gold coins,silver and even mithrel and whatever else dwarves find in their caves.

The armour is made from many things, its just like asking yourself about the time of "Braveheart" in the 1300s. The english were well armoured and had good swords ect.

He put it on Pip's tab, about 500 US bucks

Green Dragon's worse, 700 bucks

wow this is a hard topic, but those shire coins are cool!!!

I really wonder about the wages, sam's wages, how much does frodo give him? or Rosy? either way I'm sure that when they got married they must have become quite rich?

well in the EE of FOTR Bilbo described the shire as being a place to eat,drink and smoke - so I could take a guess saying they get paid in one of those 3 forms.

I think that there were of course currencies in different kingdoms and by different races and then of course different regions. Of course there was trade also, and some evidence for the existence of currency. The auction involving Bilbo's furniture has been mentioned, and auctions tend to involve goods being exchanged for currency, rather than bartered for other goods. Also, the Trolls that Bilbo and the Dwarves encountered had a purse, the purpose of purses generally (although not exclusively) being to carry coinage, and their hidden horde included pots of gold coins.

I doubt that a society as complex as that of Gondor could function without some form of currency.

I don't think however that there was a universal currency in Middle-earth. In cases like these I think that it is best to assume that they used metals as a way of money. Of course there would be coins, probably gold ones, silver ones, bronze, etc. And the most precious, gold, was worth the most of course. But what about mithril you ask? Well I believe that there were no mithril coins. I believe this because it was such a rare metal that no one would want to use it for currency. They would want to make something beautiful out of it, like a family heirloom or something. But it is also a hard metal, not soft like gold. So it would suit better being used for armor or weaponry, like the coat that Bilbo and later Frodo gets. About the exchange rate, I really believe that there was none. It was probably right on the spot like settling on 14 gold coins for a chicken or something. But maybe someone else would buy a chicken for 27 gold coins. And if there is no exchange rate, then is it really money? Maybe trading would be more appropriate since you still are exchanging an item for another item, and it might work better if the item being the coins have no set value.

I think that this is something that Tolkien forgot to address. He pointed out that he has seen many major and minor perfections in his works. Maybe this is one of them, but is it major or minor? I myself would say major seeing as Tolkien might come down hard on himself for leaving out something as simple yet so big as currency. I might be wrong though. Maybe he saw it as simple or maybe he didn't even realized he forgot it at all, and maybe he never intended to have it in there. Whether or not, I think it might be better without it. Middle-earth might not be that enjoyable if it was too realistic, especially if we enjoy the escapism aspect; escaping reality only to enter another...now I just got myself confused, oh well. It's kind of good to have imperfections, having ME seem real is great, but not too real.

maybe they used silver tolkiens.....



:P

lol, that's good

Greetings all!

I just found this forum and this thread. The issue of currency in Tolkien's world has been important to me for some time. My site is easy to find at Shirepost dot com if you wish to do so... but I thought maybe I'd just introduce how and why I bothered to create this currency in the first place.

I've always been interested in coins and stamps. My family raveled a lot when I was young, and I would always have to stop at a post office and bank to obtain all the different items from each country. I became further interested in the hobby of "postal history" which focuses more on the postmarks than the stamps themselves. When I started reading Tolkien I started with THE HOBBIT, and there in the first chapter we find Bilbo sitting on his stoop reading his morning letters. Well... to a postal history collector, this is a tantalizing phrase. The term "morning letters", implies that there must be afternoon letters also... suggesting a very sophisticated postal system and all that goes with it. Not only does it suggest that there would be stamps and postmarks and various markings... but that there would be an organized denominational monetary system and a system of weights and measures as well. So you see, in that one phrase at the very beginning of the book, Tolkien establishes a very organized administration to THE SHIRE.

In 1987 I made my first Shire Post postage stamps, and established a system of money and measures. I decided to establish our "current" year in The Shire at Gregorian-minus-600 (1987-600=Shire Reckoning 1387 etc.)

The next step was the creation of a Shire Map, to show ALL the towns and roads in the district. Finally I made postmark devices for all those towns, and and set up a system whereby people would adopt a Hobbit personna, complete with an address, and thereby be able to send mail to each other... mail which would arrive bearing Shire Post stamps and postmarks... as authentically created as possible.

Of course, by now you realize this has become something of an obsession...

Well... it's obvious that in this quest to make the fantasy become more real and tangible that coins would be next. Over the years I yearned to create these coins, and while I was already an expert in various metal-working techniques, I had never worked with presses or anything of that sort. Then finally in 2001 an antique 40 tonne manual coining press virtually fell into my lap, and I became completely obsessed with the whole coining thing and virtually a collector of antique coining equip-ment. There are seven antique presses here now... from a small 5 ton capacity screw press up to a monster 150 ton knuckle press. At the moment I've now done coins for various realms within the MIddle Earth mythos, as well as King Arthur, Leif Ericsson, and Kayless the Magnificent. And more are coming. The 1404 and 1405 Shire series will involve a re-working of the denominational system to coordinate with the Gondoran Castar and Tharni.

Anyway... thought perhaps there might be a few that would enjoy hearing about how that all happened.

Be well!

LOL!!!


i've no response to that...

... the thing that still gives me fits is mithril... I have searched for the real-world analog of the mythical metal, but there is nothing that fits all the criteria... it's just not on the periodic table anywhere! Titanium is not bad... light and strong... but it is rather difficult to work with, almost too strong. I have focused primarily on Niobium as it is fairly strong, relatively ductile, has an exceptionally high melting point, and keeps its tensile strength way up above 2000 degrees f so that it would make great dragon armor (aerospace engineers use it to line rocket nozzles). When describing it Tolkien says that "... the dwarves could make of it a metal..." suggesting that pure mithril might be a minor consituent in a proprietary alloy. In fact, Niobium is used to alloy high-strength steel... an addition of only 1% Nb can increase tensile strength 20% or more. Niobium is reasonably available, though at $140/lb it's right in there with silver on price. It cannot be melted by any ordinary means, neither can it be soldered or welded, so all fabrication must be done cold.

So anyway, while neither is the perfect stand-in... I'm currently using one or the other of titanium or niobium as what I call "Mythril" or "Mythrillium"... the mythical metal.

Next in line for tolkienistic metals is the black metal "Galvorn" used by the dark elf Eol. (Silmarillion now). For this one I think Tantalum is ideal. It's a little hard to find, and shares some of the fabricational difficulties of the others mentioned... but it's heavy (16g/cc) and dark grey in color, ductile, and with a very high melting point.

And... all three of the above metals are considered "reactive" meaning that they can be anodized to reveal rather startlingly brilliant surface colors.

Be well!

This Tantalum really sounds quite similar to how Tolkien describes Galvorn though, wasn't Galvorn extraterrestrial? Iron meteorites usually mainly consist of metallic iron minerals with nickel, either in the form of kamacite (less than 7.5% nickel) or of taenite (austenite, 20-50% nickel) Tolkien's visual descriptions rather sound like magnetite or chromite, but I dont know about its possible usage for smithing as it seems quite... stoney

EDIT hideing_behind_computer mixed something up there I meant the metal Eol used for Anglachel and Anguirel... sowwie shybag has nothing to do with Galvorn

But wait a moment, wasn't there one more artificial metal in the First Age or before? *tries to remember*