Useful but inauthentic price lists

[TRP]

I came across this while doing research for our DJ:Mythus-Averoigne reboot. The accuracy of the prices doesn't matter to me, but what does matter is that it lists some interesting items (wedding feasts, guild dues. yearly cost of feeding a merchant's household). Fiddly bits to be sure.

http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

[robertsconley]

That list been around a while and nice for what it covers.

Are you aware of the various Harn Price List. Basically centered around what NRC (N Robin Crossby, Harn's author) and the fan could find and extrapolate from 12th and 13th century prices.

https://www.lythia.com/index.php?s=price+list

[grodog]

Also well-worth checking out: Fief and Town by Lisa J. Steele, at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/fief.htm

Allan.

[austinjimm]

All very cool. Thanks for sharing. I especially liked the Harn lists. Can extrapolate some useful stuff from those.

[Matthew]

That first link gets brought up all the time, but (and I have written this so often that I feel like a broken record) it is really hopeless. The book Grodog mentions is a hundred times better because it actually lists what country it is drawing a given price from (an English shilling is not a French shilling, and we are talking potential orders of magnitude in difference).

[TRP]

That first link gets brought up all the time, but (and I have written this so often that I feel like a broken record) it is really hopeless. The book Grodog mentions is a hundred times better because it actually lists what country it is drawing a given price from (an English shilling is not a French shilling, and we are talking potential orders of magnitude in difference).

The accuracy of the prices doesn't matter to me, but what does matter is that it lists some interesting items

I anticipated the inevitable "but it's not correct" comments.
It was just a serendipitous find, and never having seen it before myself, didn't realize it was universally considered irrelevant. It has a couple of things in it's favor; I found it in a few seconds, and it's free.

[Matthew]

Maybe a different thread title, then?

Most junk is free. I wish that it was irrelevant. However, it is actually quite influential, sadly. The prices are accurate, they are just misleadingly arranged and unreferenced. Do yourself a favour, and pick up a copy of Fief.

[TRP]

Maybe a different thread title, then?

Apparently, I can't change the title of my own thread. If a mod thinks is should be changed, then might I suggest "Misleading prices, but who cares?"

[gizmomathboy]

Not exactly related but someone analyzed a bunch of Assyrian tablets to see if they could find "lost" cities based on the data:

I was hoping for something with a bit more numbers and such. Instead got lots of math and crazy computational models.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w23992