Okay, Tolkien experts: tell me what you know of Middle-Earth coinage.
I’ve a vague feeling it’s all pseudo-British coinage – shillings and farthings and such – but wasn’t exactly able to find anything on a cursory read-through of places there should be coins.
One would think Gondor maintained a coinage system, and maybe Bree kept on with Arnor’s coinage (maybe the same as Gondor’s). So the latter is probably what Bilbo and the dwarves swiped from the trolls.
But what, for example, did Lake Town use to pay? And the dwarves had to have coins – else what was Smaug making his bed out of? And even Glaurung had a hoard in Nargothrond… all object d’art, or did the elves have money?
Coins are mentioned in FOTR when the hobbits stay at Bree. Mostly in relation to their ponies being stolen from the Inn, how much Bill Ferny overcharged them for Bill the Pony, and how much compensation Mr. Butterbur gives them for the stolen ponies. No other details are offered as far as where the coins came from or what they looked like.
I think in *The Hobbit *Bilbo is flustered because he leaves his house without (among other things) any money.
I believe it is mentioned that the Orcs of Moria give the dwarf Nar a few coins as sarcastic payment for delivering a message for them (the message being they have killed Thror).
To be precise, Butterbur paid 12 silver pennies for Bill the Pony, (said to be 3 times its worth) and gave Merry 18 more to compensate for the other 3 lost ponies.
In the HOME series, “Peoples of Middle Earth”, one can read the brief and somewhat enigmatic article JRRT wrote about Gondorian currency:
Of course JRRT was more concerned about the derivation of the names of the coins than he was about actual monetary policy.
And Bilbo did bring two chests of coin home with him from his travels - one of gold, and one of silver. He gave some of the gold away in LotR: “almost the last drop of the Smaug vintage”, thinking Sam might find it useful if he were thinking of marrying.
Of course, in a low-cash economy, even a small amount of gold might be of great buying power, but Farmer Maggot (in “A Short Cut To Mushrooms”) made it clear to the Black Rider that he wanted gold a sight less than he wanted the stranger off his land.
Happened to be reading about Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, etc. coinage. The whole dracham → dirham → dram sort of linguistic relationship seems just the sort of thing Tolkien would’ve loved delving into. And the Shire, obviously, has to have shillings and farthings and such.
Alas that I suspect his numismatic reticence has left us gamers at the mercy of 1 gp = 10 sp, though.