Question about Money, Gold and Currency !

Could we ballpark which of them it would most likely be closest to using the prices listed in C&G?

no, the prices in city and guild, if they are based on anything, are likely based on some document or documents located by that author which listed the prices at some location or variety f locations that were in all likelihood not Florence. Most people in the modern day have a very distorted idea of economics based on retail pricing where the price of something simply is what it is, rather than the rich tapestry of regional variation and haggling which make up the realities of a medieval economy. This tends to be even worse in gaming (compute and table top) where people simply want a price list for what they are buying. I expect this is why AM originally decided to go as abstract as it does into economics, though demand for more concrete economic information led to the game being more broken due to extremely differing ideas and expectations over how the economy works...

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That would depend on provenience and quantity of the goods bought.

I imagine the following for 1277:

  • gold florins are used in far trade, like buying shiploads of English wool to further process in Florence;
  • silver grossi in 1277 are a former far trade currency, with pretty solid silver content to make them compete well with the English long-cross pennies, and now are used also in local whole sale trade: so may buy a cart of wine in barrels, a bolt of cloth for a tailor, or a horse for a noble;
  • pennies are the every day coins for the local markets, to buy a chicken, a meal, getting a horse shoed, and perhaps a locally made cap.

Well, quantity isn't an issue since C&G lists rates. But, yes, I recognize that location would alter things a lot. What I was wondering was whether location would alter things on the scale of the differences listed.

For a modern example, you will see gasoline price variations all over the US, within a town, across a state, and between states. But those prices are usually within about 20% of some average value. Finding a single prices for anything is still pretty foreign in the modern world, though less so now with the online marketplace.

I would expect more variation in the medieval economy. I just wasn't sure if the variation would be on the scale to differentiate there at all or not, which is why I asked.

That just shows, how C&G price lists are not universally useful - if useful at all beyond providing some relief for beleaguered SGs: we still have import prices, whole-sale prices and retail prices today.

An important variation for prices was, how far away your money was accepted.

Peasants and burgesses going to market as buyers or sellers had to use in general the coins minted by the holder of the market, who profited from slowly debasing these coins, and thereby on the long run inflating the prices..

Getting your own coins accepted in places like the Champagne fairs was a big issue: look here for the success of the gold florin abroad in the 13th century. The page is from The Economy of Renaissance Florence, which can be ordered via amazon.

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Let me put it this way- within the US prices of gas ranged recently from around $3 a gallon in Oregon to $1.60 a gallon in Kansas, and that is with modern communications technology, rapid shipping, and advanced distribution networks. Medieval Europe tended to involve a large number of short distance low volume trades, meaning that by the age of sail prices could easily be a factor of 20:1 depending on locations.

C&G did try to deal with that some. I'm not saying it's perfect, but at least they did try to consider whole-sale v. retail. Really, it's as you said, "providing some relief for beleaguered SGs."

Yup, 2000% is way too much variation to get a general gauge on much of anything.

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I know as part of the penance on Thomas Beckett's death, a lot of new churchs were built. And all of these new churches needed lead in the roof. So lead mining went up, and silver is often extracted from the same lead ore. Hence more silver was effectively mined and put into circulation (possibly even to pay the workers for the church construction). Hence the value of silver dropped.

But I am happy to say, in my saga, that it was Hermetic magi conjuring too much silver that flooded and depressed the market.