Quote:
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.
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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.)