Arcane Topic Warning: Part the Third

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

That makes me wonder who would have minted Shire pennies. The Thane, perhaps, although the authority of that office always seemed very informal.

Would the town of Bree also minted silver pennies? Especially since Butterbur is specifically stated as having them.

Why couldn't the Shire and Bree have used Arnorian coins? Even though that kingdom was defunct by Buttubur's time, as long as the coins themselves were of precious metals, that shouldn't have mattered.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Why couldn't the Shire and Bree have used Arnorian coins? Even though that kingdom was defunct by Buttubur's time, as long as the coins themselves were of precious metals, that shouldn't have mattered.

True, but since that kingdom had died out hundreds of years before, if there was no other reasonable(ish) supply of coins their value would have skyrocketed.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Why couldn't the Shire and Bree have used Arnorian coins? Even though that kingdom was defunct by Buttubur's time, as long as the coins themselves were of precious metals, that shouldn't have mattered.

They probaby DID use whatever Arnorian money was still around (plus the occasional influx from a found hoard). One of the things about a specie (precious metal) based econonmy is that coins tend to be accepted no matter how old they are, provided the purity and weigh is alright until they are melted down (up until the 1820's to 30's in the Southwest you could still pay for things in Spanish reales aka "peices of eight" and those eights were still just as likey to be "cobs" (the crude colnial version) as the somewhat more contemporary Pillar Dollars (the machine struck coins) But there would need to be some re-striking from time to time, afer so long a lot of the Arnorian coins in circulation would have worn down to a point their weight would no longer be acceptable at anything like face value.

[Formendacil]

And time is a factor here--it was a millennium from the fall of Arvedui until the War of the Ring. Although I'm sure old Arthedain coin would have been accepted, that would be like American pioneers accepting coin from Alfred the Great's time--sure, they'd accept it if it was good metal, but that's a looooong time to survive in bulk. To an extent, no doubt, the coin kept circulating, but even if it diminished slowly it WOULD diminish--and wear.

Although Tolkien says that the "only" elements of government in the Shire were the postal service and the Shirriffs, I think it might not be too far out of the way to posit the possibility that there was a mint there. For one thing, it's already been noted that the Hobbits worked with silver. For another, it is conceivable that this mint was already there in the early days of the Shire, under the authority of Arthedain and that responsibility for it was assumed by the Thains after the fall of Fornost.

On the other hand, although I think the Dúnedain = Romans equation is a good one, perhaps we should look to the Dwarves rather than Arnor as the chief source of coinage in Bilbo's era. After all, we know that the Dwarves worked with gold and silver and we also know that they had a long tradition (going back to the early Second Age at least) of developing symbiotic relationships like they had in Erebor with the Dalemen: that is, a relationship of Men who provided them with food and horsemen, etc. It is also very easy to picture the Dwarves, with their concern for just payment (cf. what they owed Laketown in their negotiations with Bard and the Elvenking), having a solid reputation for consistently pure coinage, which would be accepted wherever Dwarves were known.

What is more, Dwarves moving east and west along the Great Road are the only known source of outside commerce in the Shire--a far more plausible source for coin than a sporadic filtering up from Gondor (though this may have been more common before Tharbad was finally abandoned--one gets the sense there used to be somewhat more traffic up the Greenway before the Fell Winter).

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

What is more, Dwarves moving east and west along the Great Road are the only known source of outside commerce in the Shire--a far more plausible source for coin than a sporadic filtering up from Gondor (though this may have been more common before Tharbad was finally abandoned--one gets the sense there used to be somewhat more traffic up the Greenway before the Fell Winter).

I agree that Dwarves would have been the primary source of outside commerce for the Shire in the time of the War of the Ring. However, there's a variable in Saruman. He had been covertly buying tobacco for some time leading up to the War, and it is said that the "money" he paid for the merchandise was corrupting the hobbits with whom he was doing business. That would seem to be a fair amount of coinage, and I wonder what sort of currency he would have used.

[Zigûr]

Is there the possibility of a "Common Currency", perhaps like the Common Speech, in the West? I am imagining something of Númenórean origin which would have been used in lands under the influence of both Arnor and Gondor. Mordor tried to buy horses from Rohan as well - perhaps it was even adopted by Orcish realms in their dealings with their allies and each other.
I wonder if it's telling in the fact that Frodo did not bring a great deal of money with him in his departure from the Shire despite his desperate situation - the fact that so much of Eriador (and, perhaps, the West in general) was depopulated, uninhabited wilderness it can account somewhat for the ambiguous status of money. I wonder how much an event like the recovery of Erebor would have affected things?
Here's something from The Peoples of Middle-earth, a digression from the word for 'quarter', tharantīn:
"In Gondor tharni was used for a silver coin, the fourth part of the castar (in Noldorin the canath or fourth part of the mirian)." (p.45)
I suppose we can never know if a tharni of Gondor was equivalent to a silver penny as used in the Shire and the Bree-land though...

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Is there the possibility of a "Common Currency", perhaps like the Common Speech, in the West? I am imagining something of Númenórean origin which would have been used in lands under the influence of both Arnor and Gondor. Mordor tried to buy horses from Rohan as well - perhaps it was even adopted by Orcish realms in their dealings with their allies and each other.
I wonder if it's telling in the fact that Frodo did not bring a great deal of money with him in his departure from the Shire despite his desperate situation - the fact that so much of Eriador (and, perhaps, the West in general) was depopulated, uninhabited wilderness it can account somewhat for the ambiguous status of money. I wonder how much an event like the recovery of Erebor would have affected things?
Here's something from The Peoples of Middle-earth, a digression from the word for 'quarter', tharantīn:
"In Gondor tharni was used for a silver coin, the fourth part of the castar (in Noldorin the canath or fourth part of the mirian)." (p.45)
I suppose we can never know if a tharni of Gondor was equivalent to a silver penny as used in the Shire and the Bree-land though...

More likely the penny was eqivalent to the castar what with the whole "four" thing (the silver pennies of the middle ages usually had a large cross as part of the design of the back to make it easier to cut the coin in half and "fourthings" much has the spanish 8 real piece was cut into up to 8 "bits" (or where we get the term "two bits" for a quarter dollar)
As for the original question the answer is, quite possibly, or at least a lot of the coins would be issued to be more or less the same sort of sizes and weights. Coins that are seen as being "solid" often become trade standards, and eventually get adopted by other countries. The British penny was originally based on the Roman denarius or 10 as peice which was the standard silver exchange coin of Rome (that's why the old symbol for penny was "d") The shilling was based on the solidus (originally a gold coin weighing about 4.5 grams) as was the old frech Sou (the "/" was orignally a long "s") the pound was just that orginally the value of one pound of silver hence the "L" (for lirbrum). Other exples would be the british florin (2 shilling piece) the dutch ducat, and the dollar (orignally a german coin called a Joachimsthaler, later shortened to "Thaler")

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"The shilling was based on the solidus (originally a gold coin weighing about 4.5 grams) as was the old frech Sou (the "/" was orignally a long "s""

Only indirectly: Charlemagne ordained that the basis of Frankish coin would be one pound (Tours) of silver, subdivided into 20 solidi (sols) or 240 denarii (deniers); this Carolingian system was copied by Offa of Mercia. The late-Roman and Byzantine solidus was, as you say, a gold coin (and worth a heckuva lot more than 1 sol or shilling, despite being only 1/3 the size); how the misnaming occurred is a mystery.

A-S scilling or shilling in place of sol/solidus is of unknown origin; what we do know is that in A-S times it was the value of a sheep. There was no actual shilling coin in England until the Tudor era.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I agree that Dwarves would have been the primary source of outside commerce for the Shire in the time of the War of the Ring. However, there's a variable in Saruman. He had been covertly buying tobacco for some time leading up to the War, and it is said that the "money" he paid for the merchandise was corrupting the hobbits with whom he was doing business. That would seem to be a fair amount of coinage, and I wonder what sort of currency he would have used.

Gondorian problably at least originally. Saruman held Orthanc as an official warden of Gondor initiallly, and that title probably came with some sort of a stipend (most likey a small one, but one nonetheless, which would have been paid in Gondoran coin (since it was coming from Gondor) Later, a lot of his money would probably have been in the form of whatever Rohan used (I like to think they used the mark, but that is simple association) probably delivered to him by Grima, both for his expenses and his ring experiments (in a world where the value of the money is in the form of it's precios metal content, melted down coins are just as good a source of gold and silver as any other.)