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I find it interesting that while wages were very low when compared to today, the price of objects are not so different when priced in silver. Using a bit of go
by njarboe 9y ago
I find it interesting that while wages were very low when compared to today, the price of objects are not so different when priced in silver.
Using a bit of googling it looks like a £ in the 1300's was, as the name states, a pound of silver. The exact amount of silver varied a bit over time but this comes out to be about 350g of silver or ~$200.
So a War Horse at £80 is $16,000
Axe: 5d = 5(200/240) = $4
Cow: 10s = 10/20200 = $100
Dozen eggs = 1/2*(200/240) = $0.4
Not too far off. Could be just a historical accident, but with the value of silver holding up over the centuries, I can see where the goldbugs might get their obsession with metals.
- megaman22 9y agoThere's a pretty steep boundary in the price of silver right about when the Spanish conquistadors overthrew the Incas and started mining out Potosi. That influx of specie kicked off a world-wide wave of inflation and severely distorted economies around the world; I'm most familiar with the ways that flow of hard currency impacted the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, but it's really a world-wide phenomena. Possibly one of the most transformative events in world history.
- mcguire 9y agoWhere can I learn more?
- benbreen 9y agoVermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook has a chapter on silver that’s a good start. The whole book is well worth reading for anyone interested in early modern globalization.
- mcguire 9y agoThanks!
- megaman22 9y ago1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created covers it in some detail, along with a number of other interesting consequences of the Columbian Exchange. https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created-ebook/dp/B004G606EY https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Create...
- mcguire 9y agoCool! Thanks!
- nfriedly 9y agoI'll give a second vote for the book 1493 - it's full of fascinating history. The preceding book, 1491, is also well worth reading.
- voltagex_ 9y agoOfftopic: I wonder why the audiobook (CD) of this is $50-80?
- nfriedly 9y agoIt's $35 on Audible, if that helps.
- buzzdenver 9y agoIt say "or $14.95 with your Audible membership" for me
- voltagex_ 9y agoGot it with a free trial. It's interesting, if a little dry and rambling in parts.
- mcv 9y agoThey skipped 1492? Nothing interesting happened that year, I suppose.
- GnarfGnarf 9y agoYour reasoning is correct, but the results don't seem right. The horse is too high. Cow, axe & eggs too low. Possibly the data covers too wide a time and geographic span.
- benbreen 9y agoHe picked the highest price - if you look at the list, you'll see that a high grade war horse in a different source is listed as only £10. The note explains "Horse prices varied dramatically; for instance, they doubled between 1210 and 1310." So it sounds like an £80 war horse is either an exceptionally fine example - like comparing a Mercedes S-class to a Chevy Cruze - or the price was recorded during a period of 'horse inflation.'
- maxerickson 9y agoGrocers here use eggs to drive foot traffic. I've paid $0.50 for a dozen in the last year and usually pay around $1.
- muzani 9y agoA cow for $100 seems extremely cheap. Either that or cows where I live are much too expensive. The war horse seems about right to me though. For those times, it would be similar to a luxury car or a bulldozer.
- mcv 9y agoIt's the chassis of the medieval tank.
- icebraining 9y agoProbably depends on the quality of the cow. Here you can buy one for 200€ or for 2000€.
- allhailkatt 9y agoKeep in mind, cows were way smaller before they were cross-bred with bison. The price reflects less pounds of meat on average.