Arcane Topic Warning: Part the Third

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Earlier Thorin had sneered that "those villagers" "drink out of clay, and they cannot tell a gem from a glass bead." All of which suggests that Thorin's community, at least, had no experience of selling fine articles of craft to hobbits.

Maybe not cups specifically, but earlier in the same Unfinished Tales The Quest of Erebor passage you note, are these words from Gandalf to Glóin:

'I suppose you think [The Shirefolk] simple, because they are generous and do not haggle; and think them timid, because you never sell them any weapons'

That would seem to indicate commerce between the two races, excluding weaponry. Otherwise, what are they "haggling" over?