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Useful but inauthentic price lists
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:19 am
by 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
Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 1:13 pm
by 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
Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 1:24 pm
by grodog
Also well-worth checking out: Fief and Town by Lisa J. Steele, at
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/fief.htm
Allan.
Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:18 pm
by austinjimm
All very cool. Thanks for sharing. I especially liked the Harn lists. Can extrapolate some useful stuff from those.
Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:47 pm
by 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).
Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 11:00 pm
by TRP
Matthew wrote: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 wrote: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.

Re: Prices of medieval items
Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 11:06 pm
by 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.
Re: Misleading prices of medieval items
Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:00 am
by TRP
Matthew wrote: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?"

Re: Useful but inauthentic price lists
Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:30 am
by 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