MONEY in middle earth?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Given Tolkien's medieval calquing, and the Englishness of the Shire, by silver pennies he almost certainly was thinking of the only silver coin minted in England from the Anglo-Saxons through most of the medieval period, and which was only replaced by the copper 'cartwheel' in Victorian times. The silver penny (denarius) was originally defined as 1/240 of a pound (troy) of sterling silver. Of course, since that time a "pound sterling" has become worth a heckuva lot less than an actual one-lb lump of the stuff .925 fine.

The typical Old English silver penny weighed 1.3 to 1.5 grams, or about 1/4 of the later shilling. The shilling itself was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent- so 12 silver pennies would have been the going rate for three cows, pretty steep for a broken-down pony.

On the other hand Tolkien may have figured 12 pennies = one shilling.