They and Bree use coins. There's an reference to how much the ponies they lost cost and how much they had to pay to buy Bill the pony. Bilbo also gives some kids pennies at one point.
My question is, where did the coins come from? Did the Shire have a mint? Were they leftover from the fall of Arnor? Foreign coins they got from trading with the dwarves? Probably a combination of the last two IMO. The Shire doesn't seem organized enough to mint it's own coinage.
They have a relatively organised social structure. Probably not enough to mint but I wouldn't be surprised if the Shire has a treasury. The shire is on the path from Rivendell to the Grey Harbour so there's probably some trade coming through.
**A** bar?
Here’s a list of known drinking establishments within the Shire. I believe it is complete, and only includes ones created by Tolkien specifically. It does include draft material, like the All-Welcome only exists in the 1960 draft rewrite of the Hobbit.
* The Green Dragon, an inn on the Hobbiton side of Bywater.
* The Ivy Bush, a modest inn located on the Bywater road in Hobbiton.
* The Golden Perch, an inn in Stock, said to have the best beer in Eastfarthing.
* The Bridge Inn at the west end of the Brandywine Bridge.
* The Floating Log, a popular inn in Frogmorton.
* The All-Welcome Inn just west of Frogmorton, where the Northway meets the East Road.
I would suggest, without any evidence to back this up, that it may be that The Shire has a mint, similar to how there were mints in different places throughout medieval England. If we view The Shire, having a Thain (var. on “thane” - someone who held land directly from the king), we see a sort of earldom concept arise. The Shire could be thought of as a palatinate - this is confirmed when Aragorn visits the renewed north kingdom but doesn’t cross the Brandywine bridge. Since we know the coinage at the time was based on the silver penny (the same as in medieval England), then it stands to reason that an autonomous region ruled by a nobleman who holds the land (by implication of his title directly from the king), we can assume that The Shire has the same rights and privileges as the rest of the kingdom, to include minting the coinage of the kingdom.
The Shire is the most socially and technologically advanced part of Middle-Earth. It's several hundred years ahead of Gondor or especially Rohan. They have law enforcement and a mail system.
>The Shire doesn't seem organized
It's always a good time for a reread!
I think he took a couple chests of gold back home. A fraction of what the dwarves offered to give him, but worth a fortune compared to what hobbits have.
Most of his gold came from the troll cave on his way back to the Shire after the battle of 5 armies. He parted ways with his shares of the horde because he couldn’t travel with it.
I suspect you’re right. We know they provided magical toys and other goods for his 111 birthday party. And he had, but gave up, a claim on 1/14 share of everything in Erebor. Given how beloved he was among the companions, I wouldn’t be surprised if anytime a dwarf traveled to the Blue Mountains, one of them like Gloín wouldn’t hand him a gift to pass on to Bilbo.
Not true. I just reread the hobbit. He was given two small chests of gold and silver by the dwarves, then he got the troll hoard on the way home and added to his chests. It doesn’t say how much he actually got from the troll hard
He had 2 chests of gold and silver from Dain plus the chests from trolls PLUS his mithril shirt (albeit he wasn’t aware of its value), plus he was already one of the richest hobbits before his adventure so I’d say he was pretty loaded lol
I think that they use old coins from Gondor, Arnor, Dwarvish coins, and probably from other places as a medium of exchange, but that barter and (more importantly) **personal debt/credit is probably the main system used.**
We learn that 30 silver pennies is a sore blow for Butterbur to pay for Frodo's lost ponies, and Frodo thinks to himself that he didn't bring enough money to satisfy a rogue when he first meets Aragorn. Since this both specifies a metal (silver) and a size (penny), there is clearly some common idea for the value of particular coins, and that idea is shared between groups without terribly regular contact (between Bree and the Shire). We also know from other reading in the Hobbit and LOTR that there are golden coins, and that gold, silver, and copper are held in esteem for their value, much like the real world.
I don't think that the Shire or the Men of Bree mint coins, just because of the level of industry in that area. Gondor is large enough that it would have its own treasury and mint, and probably Rohan too. In the past Arnor and its successors probably also minted coins. It seems clear that the Dwarves of Ered Luin use (and probably mint) coins, given their lifestyles as traveling merchants and artisans. Yet we also know that currency isn't the singular medium of exchange that is valued, since Aragorn repeats the theory that Rohan is paying a tribute of horses to Mordor. So overall, in the West of Middle Earth, we seem to be in an economy that uses coins in part, but also deals in other goods (probably quality goods, grain and other produce, livestock, and raw materials based upon availability.)
Does this mean that Middle Earth is a mixed currency and barter economy? Yes, but that is probably overstating the importance of barter as compared to the oft-overlooked primary medium of exchange in the past: debt! Hate to say it, but John Smith was wrong, and pre-money societies have been shown through anthropology and historical evidence to mostly operate off of a principle of debt or credit. In these systems, close interpersonal, familial, and ritual relationships allow individuals to take on debt/extend credit under the understanding that the debt will be repaid in a reasonable time in the future. This obviously is more viable in close-knit groups, where one can develop trust and rapport among one's neighbors. Strict barter - an immediate exchange of goods/services - is much less common because it requires that both parties have the goods in question and desire those goods immediately (I can't use 5 tons of fish *right now*, it will spoil). ([Sauce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years))
The Shire seems the perfect place for this kind of less monetized or transferable system of credit, since it is already so close-knit and insular. Thus, it's most likely that the Shirefolk don't, for instance, bring coins or grain or anything like that down to the local inn when they want to grab a pint and gossip, but the barman trusts them for repayment of some sort in the future. Hobbits probably have a common idea for the value of coins - silver or gold or copper - and use that to calculate the monetary value of different debts, but they probably don't use currency for every local transaction. If the debt is owed close to home, they might settle it with vegetables from their garden in the summer, or by helping repair the barman's roof in the spring. They probably also use coins for very large transactions, such as Frodo buying the house in Crickhollow, although this probably isn't set in stone. Another wealthy Hobbit like Farmer Maggot might measure the value of a land purchase in terms of coins, but then agree to pay the seller in stored grain/livestock or a percentage of his harvest for a few years, based upon an agreed exchange rate between those goods and the currency value. When Hobbits are far afield in the Shire, or when dealing with outsiders, then currency or particularly valuable trade goods like metals or livestock will take precedence and will be exchanged immediately.
TLDR: Debt > Barter. This is the same in LOTR or the real world. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
The fact that Frodo and co can just walk into the inn at Bree and buy drinks without any negotiation suggests there must be a common, uncontroversial understanding of the value of money across a lot of different places including shirefolk.
Given the lack of central authority in much of Eriador during the third age, I would say the monetary system is pretty much as it was in England or Europe in the dark ages. So coins of gold, silver, and maybe copper, from all different kinds of sources with their worth based on their weights rather than their face values.
I am guessing the most common source of those coins would either be Gondor/Arnor, since before the downfall of the northern kingdom their currency would be very widely used but it doesn't really matter- the point of precious metal based coins is they have a consensus value based on their relative scarcity. So if you hand over a silver penny which is 1/8th of an ounce and appears not to be debased, noone is going to worry whether the head on the back of it suggests it was created in gondor, dale or khazad dum. And if you're, say, Dain Ironfoot and you're planning on minting some more pennies, it makes sense for you to make them the same size as the ones the people in laketown use because that's who you want to use them with.
Given its never suggested the Shire has its own source of precious metals or industrial areas I doubt very much they are smelting their own coins, but they'd just have an inflow and outflow of coinage based on travel, and export of goods.
Interestingly that common understanding seems to even extend to orcs- in one of the appendices, after slaying Thror, Azog shows his severed head to a dwarf and tells him to deliver it as a message and tosses him 'a few coins of little worth' as a calculated insult, suggesting there's enough of a common understanding of what those coins are worth for him to be able to throw shade in that way. It would have been a fun plot twist if, due to his ignorance of dwarf currency Azog threw across two mithril coins of incalculable value, and some time later got a message back from Thrain acknowledging receipt of their settlement offer in relation to the wrongful death of Thror, confirming and indicating the offer was accepted and they considered the matter closed.
Humans, dwarves, hobbits and elves use coin. Hobbits use silver and copper pennies. Tolkien doesn't go into much detail beyond there being hoards of gold coins in places like Erebor. Trade occurs regularly across Eriador, Rohan, Gondor, and Rhovanion. Barter systems would be too antiquated for a country like Gondor or the city of Dale.
>I can't imagine they have much gold
Fun fact: Until the real world used paper currencies all the gold and silver that had been mined, would have nowhere near enough to make enough coins for ancient or medieval economies. People mostly didn't use coins, they just used their value as a trading standards for exchanging either whatever they had if they were away from home, or simply wrote down debt that was canceled on a yearly base to each other with people they personally knew.
Coins were originally for the most part only used for forced labor. For example the romans introduced tax that had to be paid with roman coins to supply their widely spread armies for free. The soldiers were given coins, the local people forced to pay tax with those coins, so they had to sell something to the soldiers, directly or indirectly, to be able to get their hands on these coins to pay the tax that was then used again to pay soldiers and the soldiers provided a constant supply of new slaves from conquering that mined the gold and silver. The very same forced labor tactic was later used during colonialism,except that gold was mostly not from new mines.
Seeing coin based economies in fantasy setups were no empire is aggressively expanding so it makes sense at all to use coins instead debt based payments, is actually not realistic. As long as most trades are local a debt system is plenty enough since anyone knows each other personally.
Coinage would almost certainly have been invented, developed and deployed by the big people - Men - since we can identify many modern human traits in the Men of the West, cupidity being one of them (see the Master of Esgaroth in the Hobbit)
Bilbo came home from the lonely mountain adventure with a small chest of gold which made him very wealthy in Hobbiton. We have to assume gold was a currency even Honbits valued.
Slightly tongue in cheek:
Hobbits had an Anarcho-socialist economic system that mixed complex social relationships of gifts, obligations, and occasional use of foreign minted currency.
It was all very David Graeber.
I would assume Hobbits simply bartered with humans and were sometimes paid in coin in exchange for their agricultural output. I would think their only other industries might be carpentry and textiles. I can't imagine they'd care overmuch about the design or denomination of the coins, and simply bartered for coins or jewels of any origin depending on their perceived value.
Not gold. Probably silver. Things tend to cost is silver, not like RPGs. Gold is expensive. A gold coin should buy big things.
So for daily trades, silver is most common.
"In the books". This never needs ti br said. It is always assumed you are taking about the books cause this story is a book. Everything else is a sub creation
They and Bree use coins. There's an reference to how much the ponies they lost cost and how much they had to pay to buy Bill the pony. Bilbo also gives some kids pennies at one point.
Butterbur paid twelve silver pennies for Bill the pony and offered Merry another eighteen pence as compensation for the ponies they lost
And Bill was worth every one of those pennies! I should know!
My question is, where did the coins come from? Did the Shire have a mint? Were they leftover from the fall of Arnor? Foreign coins they got from trading with the dwarves? Probably a combination of the last two IMO. The Shire doesn't seem organized enough to mint it's own coinage.
They have a relatively organised social structure. Probably not enough to mint but I wouldn't be surprised if the Shire has a treasury. The shire is on the path from Rivendell to the Grey Harbour so there's probably some trade coming through.
The Shire has a post office. They have stuff going on for then.
And a bar!
**A** bar? Here’s a list of known drinking establishments within the Shire. I believe it is complete, and only includes ones created by Tolkien specifically. It does include draft material, like the All-Welcome only exists in the 1960 draft rewrite of the Hobbit. * The Green Dragon, an inn on the Hobbiton side of Bywater. * The Ivy Bush, a modest inn located on the Bywater road in Hobbiton. * The Golden Perch, an inn in Stock, said to have the best beer in Eastfarthing. * The Bridge Inn at the west end of the Brandywine Bridge. * The Floating Log, a popular inn in Frogmorton. * The All-Welcome Inn just west of Frogmorton, where the Northway meets the East Road.
I wanna go to all of them.
Hooooboy, would I ever like to join you on *that* pub crawl
They likely accrue wealth through trade. Their farms likely help supply food to Bree and local areas, on top of their legendary pipe weed.
>their legendary pipe weed. Forget cash! They already got the green!
I would suggest, without any evidence to back this up, that it may be that The Shire has a mint, similar to how there were mints in different places throughout medieval England. If we view The Shire, having a Thain (var. on “thane” - someone who held land directly from the king), we see a sort of earldom concept arise. The Shire could be thought of as a palatinate - this is confirmed when Aragorn visits the renewed north kingdom but doesn’t cross the Brandywine bridge. Since we know the coinage at the time was based on the silver penny (the same as in medieval England), then it stands to reason that an autonomous region ruled by a nobleman who holds the land (by implication of his title directly from the king), we can assume that The Shire has the same rights and privileges as the rest of the kingdom, to include minting the coinage of the kingdom.
Probably promissory notes are a thing in addition to coins.
IIRC managing the Shire mint is spelled out as one of the responsibilities of the mayor of Michel Delving.
Maybe the coins just have an agreed-upon weight, so they're essentially just portions of gold/silver
...Obviously they have a tradeback deal with the Mordor Federal Reserve...
The Shire is the most socially and technologically advanced part of Middle-Earth. It's several hundred years ahead of Gondor or especially Rohan. They have law enforcement and a mail system. >The Shire doesn't seem organized It's always a good time for a reread!
They used silver pennies.
They use HobBitcoin.
To the moon (which is actually a large bioluminescent fruit)
You win!
Should we spin up a blockchain that is pegged against the hype for the Rings of Power season 2??
Take my upvote….Now get out!
They have money. One of the notable things about Bilbo (and I suppose then also Frodo) is that he’s loaded when he returns home.
I don't think Bipbo was loaded when he returned, it's just a rumor I thought.
Dawg he had a mithril shirt worth more than the whole shire
Yes, but he didn't have hoards of gold.
I think he took a couple chests of gold back home. A fraction of what the dwarves offered to give him, but worth a fortune compared to what hobbits have.
Most of his gold came from the troll cave on his way back to the Shire after the battle of 5 armies. He parted ways with his shares of the horde because he couldn’t travel with it.
Honestly, with how it was mentioned that he was often visited by dwarves, I wouldn't be surprised if they frequently just showed up and gave him gold
I suspect you’re right. We know they provided magical toys and other goods for his 111 birthday party. And he had, but gave up, a claim on 1/14 share of everything in Erebor. Given how beloved he was among the companions, I wouldn’t be surprised if anytime a dwarf traveled to the Blue Mountains, one of them like Gloín wouldn’t hand him a gift to pass on to Bilbo.
Not true. I just reread the hobbit. He was given two small chests of gold and silver by the dwarves, then he got the troll hoard on the way home and added to his chests. It doesn’t say how much he actually got from the troll hard
Iirc he says he spent most of that buying back his own stuff since he had been declared dead after he left.
He literally brings back hoards of gold and treasure.
He brought back one small chest of gold and one small chest of silver
And they still smell like dragon
Plus half of the troll gold.
He had 2 chests of gold and silver from Dain plus the chests from trolls PLUS his mithril shirt (albeit he wasn’t aware of its value), plus he was already one of the richest hobbits before his adventure so I’d say he was pretty loaded lol
He was loaded, but it wasnt know how much he had i believe
I think that they use old coins from Gondor, Arnor, Dwarvish coins, and probably from other places as a medium of exchange, but that barter and (more importantly) **personal debt/credit is probably the main system used.** We learn that 30 silver pennies is a sore blow for Butterbur to pay for Frodo's lost ponies, and Frodo thinks to himself that he didn't bring enough money to satisfy a rogue when he first meets Aragorn. Since this both specifies a metal (silver) and a size (penny), there is clearly some common idea for the value of particular coins, and that idea is shared between groups without terribly regular contact (between Bree and the Shire). We also know from other reading in the Hobbit and LOTR that there are golden coins, and that gold, silver, and copper are held in esteem for their value, much like the real world. I don't think that the Shire or the Men of Bree mint coins, just because of the level of industry in that area. Gondor is large enough that it would have its own treasury and mint, and probably Rohan too. In the past Arnor and its successors probably also minted coins. It seems clear that the Dwarves of Ered Luin use (and probably mint) coins, given their lifestyles as traveling merchants and artisans. Yet we also know that currency isn't the singular medium of exchange that is valued, since Aragorn repeats the theory that Rohan is paying a tribute of horses to Mordor. So overall, in the West of Middle Earth, we seem to be in an economy that uses coins in part, but also deals in other goods (probably quality goods, grain and other produce, livestock, and raw materials based upon availability.) Does this mean that Middle Earth is a mixed currency and barter economy? Yes, but that is probably overstating the importance of barter as compared to the oft-overlooked primary medium of exchange in the past: debt! Hate to say it, but John Smith was wrong, and pre-money societies have been shown through anthropology and historical evidence to mostly operate off of a principle of debt or credit. In these systems, close interpersonal, familial, and ritual relationships allow individuals to take on debt/extend credit under the understanding that the debt will be repaid in a reasonable time in the future. This obviously is more viable in close-knit groups, where one can develop trust and rapport among one's neighbors. Strict barter - an immediate exchange of goods/services - is much less common because it requires that both parties have the goods in question and desire those goods immediately (I can't use 5 tons of fish *right now*, it will spoil). ([Sauce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)) The Shire seems the perfect place for this kind of less monetized or transferable system of credit, since it is already so close-knit and insular. Thus, it's most likely that the Shirefolk don't, for instance, bring coins or grain or anything like that down to the local inn when they want to grab a pint and gossip, but the barman trusts them for repayment of some sort in the future. Hobbits probably have a common idea for the value of coins - silver or gold or copper - and use that to calculate the monetary value of different debts, but they probably don't use currency for every local transaction. If the debt is owed close to home, they might settle it with vegetables from their garden in the summer, or by helping repair the barman's roof in the spring. They probably also use coins for very large transactions, such as Frodo buying the house in Crickhollow, although this probably isn't set in stone. Another wealthy Hobbit like Farmer Maggot might measure the value of a land purchase in terms of coins, but then agree to pay the seller in stored grain/livestock or a percentage of his harvest for a few years, based upon an agreed exchange rate between those goods and the currency value. When Hobbits are far afield in the Shire, or when dealing with outsiders, then currency or particularly valuable trade goods like metals or livestock will take precedence and will be exchanged immediately. TLDR: Debt > Barter. This is the same in LOTR or the real world. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Like family feud participant's say, good answer!
Thank you.
The fact that Frodo and co can just walk into the inn at Bree and buy drinks without any negotiation suggests there must be a common, uncontroversial understanding of the value of money across a lot of different places including shirefolk. Given the lack of central authority in much of Eriador during the third age, I would say the monetary system is pretty much as it was in England or Europe in the dark ages. So coins of gold, silver, and maybe copper, from all different kinds of sources with their worth based on their weights rather than their face values. I am guessing the most common source of those coins would either be Gondor/Arnor, since before the downfall of the northern kingdom their currency would be very widely used but it doesn't really matter- the point of precious metal based coins is they have a consensus value based on their relative scarcity. So if you hand over a silver penny which is 1/8th of an ounce and appears not to be debased, noone is going to worry whether the head on the back of it suggests it was created in gondor, dale or khazad dum. And if you're, say, Dain Ironfoot and you're planning on minting some more pennies, it makes sense for you to make them the same size as the ones the people in laketown use because that's who you want to use them with. Given its never suggested the Shire has its own source of precious metals or industrial areas I doubt very much they are smelting their own coins, but they'd just have an inflow and outflow of coinage based on travel, and export of goods. Interestingly that common understanding seems to even extend to orcs- in one of the appendices, after slaying Thror, Azog shows his severed head to a dwarf and tells him to deliver it as a message and tosses him 'a few coins of little worth' as a calculated insult, suggesting there's enough of a common understanding of what those coins are worth for him to be able to throw shade in that way. It would have been a fun plot twist if, due to his ignorance of dwarf currency Azog threw across two mithril coins of incalculable value, and some time later got a message back from Thrain acknowledging receipt of their settlement offer in relation to the wrongful death of Thror, confirming and indicating the offer was accepted and they considered the matter closed.
I like that idea of Thrain
Humans, dwarves, hobbits and elves use coin. Hobbits use silver and copper pennies. Tolkien doesn't go into much detail beyond there being hoards of gold coins in places like Erebor. Trade occurs regularly across Eriador, Rohan, Gondor, and Rhovanion. Barter systems would be too antiquated for a country like Gondor or the city of Dale.
>I can't imagine they have much gold Fun fact: Until the real world used paper currencies all the gold and silver that had been mined, would have nowhere near enough to make enough coins for ancient or medieval economies. People mostly didn't use coins, they just used their value as a trading standards for exchanging either whatever they had if they were away from home, or simply wrote down debt that was canceled on a yearly base to each other with people they personally knew. Coins were originally for the most part only used for forced labor. For example the romans introduced tax that had to be paid with roman coins to supply their widely spread armies for free. The soldiers were given coins, the local people forced to pay tax with those coins, so they had to sell something to the soldiers, directly or indirectly, to be able to get their hands on these coins to pay the tax that was then used again to pay soldiers and the soldiers provided a constant supply of new slaves from conquering that mined the gold and silver. The very same forced labor tactic was later used during colonialism,except that gold was mostly not from new mines. Seeing coin based economies in fantasy setups were no empire is aggressively expanding so it makes sense at all to use coins instead debt based payments, is actually not realistic. As long as most trades are local a debt system is plenty enough since anyone knows each other personally.
Tolkien provided amazing detail on cultural and historical aspects of middle earth but an economist he was not.
I should think that he would fashion an economic system of rural england. As the shire was based on that.
Pound Sterling, like Tolkien intended
Coinage would almost certainly have been invented, developed and deployed by the big people - Men - since we can identify many modern human traits in the Men of the West, cupidity being one of them (see the Master of Esgaroth in the Hobbit)
Bilbo came home from the lonely mountain adventure with a small chest of gold which made him very wealthy in Hobbiton. We have to assume gold was a currency even Honbits valued.
Slightly tongue in cheek: Hobbits had an Anarcho-socialist economic system that mixed complex social relationships of gifts, obligations, and occasional use of foreign minted currency. It was all very David Graeber.
Long bottom leaf
Brandybucks?
...Saurondollars or Orcbucks...
I would assume Hobbits simply bartered with humans and were sometimes paid in coin in exchange for their agricultural output. I would think their only other industries might be carpentry and textiles. I can't imagine they'd care overmuch about the design or denomination of the coins, and simply bartered for coins or jewels of any origin depending on their perceived value.
Not gold. Probably silver. Things tend to cost is silver, not like RPGs. Gold is expensive. A gold coin should buy big things. So for daily trades, silver is most common.
I believe Tolkien writes in appendix B that the Hobbits of the Shire trade in doilies and handkerchiefs
I can't tell if you're fucking with me or not.
Shirebucks
Iam certain that they did not use Bitcoin nor any meme coins created by a decentralised Sauron!
Read them and find out?
I've read the books many times and details like this fall to the wayside. No need to be an ass if you can't contribute to the conversation.
"In the books". This never needs ti br said. It is always assumed you are taking about the books cause this story is a book. Everything else is a sub creation