What Did Medieval Items Really Cost? And How Much Did An Archer Make?

Luminaries.org has an interesting list of prices of medieval items (compiled by Kenneth Hodges). It consisted of extracted references from books such as English Wayfaring Life in the XIVth Century, J. J. Jusserand, London in the Age of Chaucer, A. R. Myers, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, Christopher Dyer, English Weapons & Warfare, 449-1660, A. V. B. Norman and Don Potting, and several more. It includes tools, food, livestock, books, education, buildings, clothing, armor, weapons, funerals, and travel; and includes wages for various professions from mercenaries to weavers to kitchen servants to barons! It makes for a fascinating read and a great resource for medieval fantasy games. (Thanks to Jay for the scoop!)

The image below is just the "WAGES" section -- click on it for the full thing!
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[barasawa]

pricing

It's interesting and useful if you want to gauge things on a realistic scale, something that doesn't always work for games.
On the other hand, I really wish the prices had been converted to a single system that I understand by just looking at. Something decimal based instead of that old mess. As to possible complaints about converting the money to a different system, they already had to figure out relative values as that economy didn't use a lot of actual money & prices, as the author does mention.
And that the text was more readable as that font on that background is rather difficult to read, and the usual methods of making it more legible won't work with how they've done it.
If you're curious as to the money, I've copied their explanation below:

Money goes as follows:
1 pound (L) = 20 shillings (s)
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence (d)
1 penny = 4 farthings
1 mark = 13s 4d
The French Livre, sou, and denier are equivalent to the pound, shilling and penny (Latin liber, solidus, and denarius, I believe, which is where the weird English abbreviations come from).

> Final note from me. I like history, and knowing how they did things, but I don't like trying to repeat it. I find pricings like this very cumbersome and inappropriate for games that don't involve calculators & scratchpads, or automated computer programs, or possibly a group of medieval accountants.

P.S. - Sorry, but if you don't know, pence is the plural of penny. (I've found most Americans don't know, but gamers tend to.)

 

[FowlJ]

I had a pretty tough time deciphering the currencies the way that they presented them, so for anyone having similar trouble here they are arranged largest to smallest:

1 Pound (L) (= 20 Shillings (s))
1 Mark (= 13 Shillings + 4 Pence (d) [13.3 Shillings])
1 Crown (= 5 Shillings)
1 Shilling (= 12 Pence)
1 Penny (= 4 Farthings)
1 Farthing (= 0.25 Pence)

 

[Morrus]

That system isn't that old. Decimalisation only happened in the UK in 1971. Currency akin to that was in use when D&D was being designed!

 

[jimmifett]

so... what is d?

 

[Morrus]

so... what is d?

Pence. These days, post decimalisation, it's p.

Prices would typically used pounds, shillings and pence.

 

[FowlJ]

so... what is d?

Penny / Pence (or denier or denarius) per the currency description.

 

[Celebrim]

This is an old list well known to people who do world building, but it's still a really good and helpful one that deserves a wider audience.

1 shilling corresponds to 1 silver piece in D&D terms.
1 pound corresponds to 1 gold piece in D&D terms.
1 penny corresponds to 1 copper piece in D&D terms.

There is a small inflationary trend going on over the period in question, but nothing like the rate of modern inflation. However, you should keep in mind that an average laborers wage roughly doubled between 1200 and 1500 when making comparisons like that between the carpenter and the armorer.

It's also worth noting that for servants like Squires or 'Kitchen Servants', the total wages include room and board (basically, your share of the leftovers, often spelled out in the order of who got the first dibs, and a warm place by the fire) and the job was considered to be more of an 'unpaid internship' sort of position. The cost of room and board isn't included in the 'wage' listed above.

Gygax's prices - and thus the prices D&D have historically used - tend to be rather accurate in the case of non-adventuring supplies, commodities and labor, and radically inflated in the case of adventuring supplies and anything else that PC's would want to buy. Gygax himself outlined the justification for this in the 1e AD&D player's handbook, noting that the prices for things like swords, tools, and the like assumed that the players were beginning play in an area similar to the Klondike gold rush. Somehow this fundamental fact got lost over the years, and people have tried to make a functional pricing system based of the 1e AD&D prices without taking into account the fiction behind them.

One of the most important historical corrections you can make to standard D&D economics is realize that to correct "PC pricing" to the historical pricing, it's usually just necessary to divide by 20, that is - convert gold pieces to silver pieces. Most D&D prices are pretty decent if you assume the thing is priced in silver rather than gold. Gold was vastly more valuable than typical D&D price lists tend to make it. Note for example, the income of the Crown for an entire year was roughly 30,000 gold pieces - less than a PC might value a single magical item. Once you get PC's and the rest of the world on the same standard, you can start thinking about a more functional economy.

If I can make one other suggestion, manufacturing and powered transportation have over the years made the cost of goods relative to income lower. But the cost of handmade goods over time, when adjusted for inflation (and if need be, purchasing power parity) is in my experience relatively constant. Any offset in lower price owing to the decreased cost of raw materials tends to be offset by the increased expected standards of living. So wherever tables like the above don't provide direct insight, a reasonable approximation can be made by looking up the price of a hand made good (a hand tailored suit, or hand crafted furniture, for example), and then making the following (rough) conversion:

$1000 = 1 gold piece
$50 = 1 silver piece
$5 = 1 copper piece

That has worked for me really well in understanding what a price in D&D terms means.

 

[jimmifett]

Ok, after converting to a common numerating system so that a sane person can actually compare values...

[sblock]

Profession
Mercenaries:
    knight banneret                48d/day
    knight                    24d/day
    man-at-arms or squire            12d/day
Regular Army                    12d/day
    Esquires, constables, and
        centenars
    Mounted Archers, armored        6d/day
        infantry, hobilars,
        vintenars
    Welsh vintenars                4d/day
    Archers                    3d/day
    Welsh infantry                2d/day
    Captain                    96d/day
    Lieutenant                48d/day
    Ensign                    24d/day
    Drummer or trumpeter            20d/day
    cavalryman                18d/day
    infantry                8d/day
Laborer                        480d Max
Crown revenues (at peace)            7,200,000d
Barons per year                    48,000d - 120,000d+
Earls per year                    96,000d - 2,640,000d
Sergeant at Law (top lawyer)            72,000d/year
Chief armorer                    320d/month
Other armorers in same shop            288d/month
    except "Old Martyn" who made        466d/month
Apprentice in same shop                6d/day
Master Mason                    4d/day
Master Carpenter                3d/day
Carpenter's Guild stipend to            14d/week
    a sick member
Weavers                        5d/day, no food

Chantry priest per year                1120d
Squires per anum                160d - 240d
Carters, porters, falconers            60-102d/year
    grooms, messengers
Kitchen servants                24-48d/year
Boys and pages                    12-72d/year
Wardens of London Bridges            2,400d

[/sblock]

 

[RHGreen]

Some more random facts:

Pound refers to a pound of silver, 240 pennies are 1/240th of a pound.
Marks were in gold and were used as apologies or special gifts.
Pennies were cut in half and quarters, literal half/quarter pennies.
In medieval England the only actual coin was the silver penny (other denominations were basically accounting terms)

WIKI on coin debasement (could inspire a criminal story-line)

"Coin debasement was effected by several methods, including clipping (shaving metal from the coin's circumference) and sweating (shaking the coins in a bag and collecting the dust worn off). "