money in middle earth

[Lalwendë]

I would presume that if someone like Bilbo came back to The Shire with a lot of gold that was not in the form of Shire currency then he would have had to exchange it in some way. Now, if The Shire had currency, then it would also need the bullion to make it from, which presumably would not be all that easy to come by! Therefore, Bilbo could well have passed his bullion on to the 'treasury' or 'mint' in exchange for coinage.

I am not sure if there were banks though, so maybe Bilbo dd have to hide his money in the cellars of Bag End?

I interpret the class structure of The Shire differently. It is clear that the Bagginses are solid Middle Class. Tolkien made it clear that they were quite ordinary, with conservative views, just well off. Bilbo is a fantastically well observed, and gently satirical representation of an English middle class male: likes to read, suspicious of strangers, keen on routines such as teatime, likes small pleasures such as a nice cake. I'm not sure whether his type is dying out nowadays. Putting those things together these days might be seen as creating a less sympathetic character.

Merry and Pippin are clearly of the 'old' aristocratic class, together with the teeming family and the sprawling family home (the 'country estate'). The Sackville Bagginses are a joke of Tolkien's either on the part of Middle Class intellectuals (like the Bloomsbury set, which included Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf), or on those who were Middle class and sought to make themselves more aristocratic e.g. by acquiring a double-barrelled name. I've heard Tolkien was quite sporty in his youth and slightly suspicious of more 'aesthetic' types.

Frodo may well have earned much income from quiet investments, maybe a little rent here and there on property or land. Was he left with any money of his own after his parents died?

The Shire is not feudal, it is more advanced. It is more like turn of the century (19th/20th, not 20th/21st!) Britain, but without a Government and all the machinery of State.

[Frodo Baggins]

Perhaps just like the Hobbits used the calendar set up in Gondor by the king (i.e. King's reckoning) they used some sort of "universal" currency also set up by the kings and/ or stewards? Perhaps this currency was used among most settlements of Hobbits and men. Though I doubut that elves or dwarves used such currency, as stand-offish as they can be.

Wealthy families like Bagginses and Tooks I'm sure had a system like the old days of the humans. The weathy people owned scads of land and had other people work it for them. The landlords in turn got a percentage of whatever money the peasants made or grew. They also may have collected rent from people living on their land. For all we know, the Gamgees of Bagshot Row may have been paying rent to the Bagginses!!

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

The Shire is not feudal, it is more advanced. It is more like turn of the century (19th/20th, not 20th/21st!) Britain, but without a Government and all the machinery of State.

I agree that it is not feudal- hence my attempt to suggest that Frodo's position as chief landlord in the Hobbiton area- if the case at all- is more of a lingering effect of the once more-feudal Baggins homeland. All that would be needed is for Frodo to own a few substantial farms and maybe a Bagshot Row or three, and someone as modest in needs as he was would probably be set.

What difference does it make if Frodo comes by these "investments" as you call them, through the investment of money or through his inheritance?

And call the Bagginses middle-class stereotypes if you like, but to me Bag-End smacks more of a manor house suited to a beknighted peer than something truly middle class.

[davem]

Clearly Hobbits did use coins

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

And call the Bagginses middle-class stereotypes if you like, but to me Bag-End smacks more of a manor house suited to a beknighted peer than something truly middle class.

But the Bagginses are definitely middle class while the Tooks are "gentry"/aristocracy. There is a huge difference in mentality if not finance. Maybe it is hard also to realise how (ridiculously) this mattered then but it is barely a century since my great grandmother was disowned by her family for marrying "in to trade" - she was also spat at in the streets for being so immodest as to ride a bicycle ..... Bit of a Belladonna Took herself

[A_Brandybuck]

I think, that the behaviour of Lotho is crucial in this discussion.

Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire:
He'd funny ideas had Pimple. Seems he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folk about. It soon came out that he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more, though where he got the money was a mystery: mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations. He'd already bought Sandyman's mill before he came to Bag End, seemingly.
'Of course he started with a lot of property in the Southfarthing which he had from his dad; and it seems he'd been selling a lot o' the best leaf, and sending it away quietly for a year or two. But at the end o' last year he began sending away loads of stuff, not only leaf. Things began to get short, and winter coming on, too. Folk got angry, but he had his answer.

Farmer Cotton clearly stated, that there is money in the Shire. At least Lotho bought some buildings with money. The question came up, where he got all the money and it seems clear, that he had some tradings with Isengard, which is (for me) obviously the source of his money.
Farmer Cotton didn't know, where the money came from, so I think, that this was very 'normal' money, which seems to look not very exotic. I mean Farmer Cotton didn't explicitly mention that this was money from elsewhere or that there was such a rumour. In this case he would clearly have mentioned it, because this had (at least partly) answered the question, where he got that money.

And alone the possibility the Lotho could make such deals with some foreigners could mean, that there must be a shared basis, of which the tradings underlie.

[Rumil]

One source of cash, or precious metal, for the Shire must have been derived from their dealings with the Dwarves.

The Dwarves often travelled through the Shire and seem to have bought agricultural produce from the hobbits, probably sometimes by barter for 'ironmongery' of various types, but conceivably with coins. The Dwarves were not farmers and had a similar sort of relationship with the men of the second age. I seem to remember this from UT where Gandalf explains his dealings with Thorin and 'of Dwarves and men'.

[Kuruharan]

I would presume that if someone like Bilbo came back to The Shire with a lot of gold that was not in the form of Shire currency then he would have had to exchange it in some way.

Not really. Historically speaking, people were not always nearly as finicky about the…err…”national origin” (an extremely clumsy expression, but I don’t know how else to put it) of currency. This was because the issue at stake was the value of the metal itself (often easily expressed in weight or comparison to other metals), not the relative credit of the coin’s nation of origin. The gold would have been gold and spendable in a money economy that had experience with gold (and I am presuming that the Shire did based on general common sense and the points made by Rumil) whether the coins happened to be stamped with the head of Thror, King Under the Mountain or stamped with the head of Isumbras III, Thain of the Shire.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Not really. Historically speaking, people were not always nearly as finicky about the…err…”national origin” (an extremely clumsy expression, but I don’t know how else to put it) of currency. This was because the issue at stake was the value of the metal itself (often easily expressed in weight or comparison to other metals), not the relative credit of the coin’s nation of origin. The gold would have been gold and spendable in a money economy that had experience with gold (and I am presuming that the Shire did based on general common sense and the points made by Rumil) whether the coins happened to be stamped with the head of Thror, King Under the Mountain or stamped with the head of Isumbras III, Thain of the Shire.

That's true. Archaeological finds of money often contain a variety of coins, from a variety of countries. Just because say a Saxon hoard includes say Italian coins, does not mean those Saxons went there, just that these coins had come to them through trade of other people. Probably bad examples to contrast, but there you go! It was the actual quality of the money that counted, which is where that image of someone biting a coin to see if it is real comes from.

I was thinking of what might happen if someone came to The Shire with actual bullion. Obviously a lump of gold would be less useable than coins, except maybe if a Hobbit wished to buy a new Smial. Coins, even if they are not all of the same Mint, can be measured for what they are worth, and are obviously easier to use on smaller purchases - try knocking lumps out of a gold bar to pay for your groceries, it's not a very accurate way of paying!

There's also another question to raise. If there was not a Mint in the Shire, how could the flow of cash be controlled? Too much cash in the economy would cause serious inflation, so would Bilbo's return with 'treasure' have raised eyebrows in more ways than one?