How much would fantasy stuff cost

[Aldarion]

How Much Would Fantasy Stuff Cost

As saying goes, money makes the world turn. Some way of payment is absolutely necessary for existence of a complex society, and barter is simply impractical on large scale. In premodern history, pr…

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As saying goes, money makes the world turn. Some way of payment is absolutely necessary for existence of a complex society, and barter is simply impractical on large scale. In premodern history, precious metals – gold, silver and bronze – had shown themselves to be the most practical medium of exchange. And this has made its way to fantasy – but all too many fantasy writers do not really understand premodern economy.

 

[Finchbearer]

I very much the idea of hack silver. Wearable, fashionable currency.

 

[pmmg]

Gold generally is way more common in fantasy worlds than the historical record. Did you see how much gold smaug had in that last movie?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Middle-Earth is younger and the heavy metals haven't had time to sink into the planet yet, heh heh. Being a small piece of a planet, and having a species inclined to dig dig dig dwarf dig! it would only take a couple of gold-rich regions to produce Smaug's hoard. In particular, since the dwarves hoarded it first. How much gold was on those Spanish ships?

Now, let's say a culture can mint platinum coins; why would they be more valuable than gold? Scarcity only matters if there is a use. Gold's value is in its color and beauty more than anything else, while platinum is just another silvery metal. What makes platinum valuable is its industrial uses. Yes, it can be used in jewelry, and yes, scarcity matters, but without some greater use, I'm not so sure platinum would be relevant.

Gold generally is way more common in fantasy worlds than the historical record. Did you see how much gold smaug had in that last movie?

 

[Finchbearer]

Smaug was more about Anglo Saxon mythology.

 

[pmmg]

How much gold was on those Spanish ships?

Not enough to make a 40' tall gold dwarf statue, or have waterfalls of endless gold under the mountain. But...even if the Gold all vanished, it still suggests fantasy worlds have gold more abundantly than earth proper. I mean, I can say silver if I like, but nothing captures attention like a room full of gold.

Also...I'd suggest there is an aspect of the 'perception' of scarcity, or even the 'perception' of value for many things. Gold is not really all that scarce, and neither are diamonds, but....they sure cost a lot at the jewelry story.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

No doubt they aren't that scarce in the real world, but in the case of diamonds, quality matters. Even then, it's still a market driven by manmade scarcity. A big vein of gold can produce over 5000 pounds of gold, so, in a fantasy world like Middle-Earth? Well, we don't really know.

And to be honest, I couldn't stomach the new Hobbit movies enough to see Smaug's pile of gold. I'm more of a classic animated Hobbit guy. All I really know is my neck and back would hurt like hell after a night's sleep on a pile of gold.

 

[Prince of Spires]

The Spanish Treasure fleet actually carried mainly silver, not gold. The only fully captured treasure fleet (captured by the Dutch admiral Piet Hein) carried aproximatly half a billion euros worth of goods, made up of 177.000 pounds of silver and 66 pounds of gold as well as various other goods.

Interestingly, the capture of Smaug's treasure would in the real world probably have had a destabilizing effect on the economy of the region and most of middle earth and would have seriously devalued golds for a few decades. It's may very well have kicked off the war that has become know as the War of the Ring, with the victorious side blaming Sauron and some silly trinket...

Think about it. Estimates on the value of the Smaug horde vary, but on the conservative side it comes to about $50-60 billion, mainly in gold. Imagine what would happen if all that gold suddenly finds itself onto the market. It would devalue gold and cause rampant inflation across the region, comparable to the hyper-inflation in Germany prior to world war 2.

The capture of the Spanish treasure fleet already devalued silver across Europe and had some serious destabilizing effects on Spain, as well as funding the Dutch armies for close to a year. Now pick a treasure horde 100 times that.

There's a story in there somewhere...

 

[Demesnedenoir]

This doesn't take into account the "hoarding" nature of dwarves, which is "extreme" in the way of Tolkien's world. Not to mention, what the hell is there to spend it on? A trillion dollars released into circulation that gets stuffed into a mattress has no inflationary of destabilizing effect.

Smart and greedy dwarves would not overspend on basic supplies just because they have massive wealth. This is why it's good dwarves and not humans got rid of Smaug, heh heh.

Sincerely, Devil's Advocacy Inc.

Addendum: Again, I have no idea how the idiotic new Hobbit movies portrayed the wealth. When reading the books, I always thought of Dwarven wealth as overstated and more legendary than realistic. That is the way of legends, after all.

The Spanish Treasure fleet actually carried mainly silver, not gold. The only fully captured treasure fleet (captured by the Dutch admiral Piet Hein) carried aproximatly half a billion euros worth of goods, made up of 177.000 pounds of silver and 66 pounds of gold as well as various other goods.

Interestingly, the capture of Smaug's treasure would in the real world probably have had a destabilizing effect on the economy of the region and most of middle earth and would have seriously devalued golds for a few decades. It's may very well have kicked off the war that has become know as the War of the Ring, with the victorious side blaming Sauron and some silly trinket...

Think about it. Estimates on the value of the Smaug horde vary, but on the conservative side it comes to about $50-60 billion, mainly in gold. Imagine what would happen if all that gold suddenly finds itself onto the market. It would devalue gold and cause rampant inflation across the region, comparable to the hyper-inflation in Germany prior to world war 2.

The capture of the Spanish treasure fleet already devalued silver across Europe and had some serious destabilizing effects on Spain, as well as funding the Dutch armies for close to a year. Now pick a treasure horde 100 times that.

There's a story in there somewhere...

 

[pmmg]

Here is a good bit of it. just need to go about 40 seconds in.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yup, that's as overdone as the rest of the movies that I managed to watch. No wonder the dwarves were pissed! heh heh.

No wonder the Hobbits grow everything for their food.

 

[pmmg]

Turns out the Dwarves were really good at gold plating wooden nickels. No one knew.

 

[skip.knox]

Well, if I'm willing to accept flying dragons, I guess the quantity of gold in the world is going to be a lesser concern.

But gold isn't money. It's not money until it's used as tender, which is what Aldarion was addressing.

I tend to look for opportunities in these kind of details (and discussions thereof). Something I can do something with, rather than some point on which to critique what others have done.

In the case of money, exchange, and barter, there are plenty of opportunities for worldbuilding details and for plot and even for character. I don't care that most fantasy novels oversimplify and exaggerate--it's convenient and sometimes even necessary--but for those who care to, a look at premodern economics can pay dividends (hah!).

As with so much else medieval, the historical reality was far more complex than is usually portrayed. There were scads of monetary systems. The minting of money was held to be a private privilege that devolved downward from the monarch. So too was the mining and initial marketing of precious metals.

Coinage was the currency of convenience, but there were other forms. One could be the metal itself, for ultimately the value of the coin derived from the amount of silver or gold (or copper) present. A moneychanger could take that gold necklace and give you coins in return. There was also money of account, which wasn't coinage at all but was strictly money kept in, well, in account books. If you read about, say, a ransom being paid that amounted to a hundred thousand marks, you should not picture wagonloads of silver trundling across the Elbe River. It was all handled with pen and ink.

Barter was alive and well right through the Middle Ages, though it beat a slow and steady retreat across the centuries. It persisted longer in the countryside. Then as now, exchanging a service--some sort of specialty work--for some goods was commonplace. This lived without difficulty alongside petty mercantile activities such as selling eggs or products from a kitchen garden at the weekly market, then using those few pennies to buy a bit of ribbon or pay a fine or whatever.

As to the subject line, prices are a whole topic in themselves. For the most part, I'd say it's not worth trying to assign prices unless you're running an RPG where player money matters. For a fantasy novel, there are really only two prices: the characters can afford it, or the characters can't afford it. If you start assigning numbers, now you have to make everything consistent and proportionate, and you attract the attention of bean counters. They will hold you accountable. (Hah #2!).

There's much more to be said on this, but that's enough for now.

 

[Prince of Spires]

This doesn't take into account the "hoarding" nature of dwarves, which is "extreme" in the way of Tolkien's world. Not to mention, what the hell is there to spend it on? A trillion dollars released into circulation that gets stuffed into a mattress has no inflationary of destabilizing effect.

Smart and greedy dwarves would not overspend on basic supplies just because they have massive wealth. This is why it's good dwarves and not humans got rid of Smaug, heh heh.

Sincerely, Devil's Advocacy Inc.

At least part of the hoard went to the silly humans in lake town. And they no doubt spent it on silly things like rebuilding their houses and buying food. Smaug in his last moments undoubtedly destroyed much of their agricultural land, leading to hunger and stuff.

Also, the dwarves would have hoarded much of it, but they still would have funished the lonely mountain, importing materials, causing prices to rise all across Middle Earth. Even spending 10% of the treasure would have resulted in a big, destabilizing effect on the region. As mentioned, Spain losing just 1% of that number bankrupted the Spanish crown, and funded armies of a nation at war for almost a year.

Add to that, that there suddenly was both a power vacuum, with Smaug gone (as well as the orcs of the surrounding lands), and a stubborn, militaristic force inhabiting the mountain, and everyone would have been spending their new found wealth on purchasing weapons.

All in all, Gandalf was responsible for the War of the Ring by causing rampant inflation across middle earth and starting an arms race. It ended in destroying the rightful ruler of Mordor while installing a puppet government in Gondor. And we celebrate him for it because of some propaganda released years after the fact.