Prices of various things

[valiant12]

Can you give me some information, or recommend me some resources about the prices of various things throughout different historical periods. I'm mostly interested in what my main characters can afford with their incomes and not the exact prices. In other words what was expensive and what was cheap. Things i'm especially interested in;
-salt
-spices
-cooking utensils
-furniture
-alcohol- beer,ale,cider,wine,rum,other
-clothes
-fancy clothes
-wigs
-gloves
-hats
-socks
-winter clothes
-honey/sugar
-shoes
-animals(horses,farm animals,pets,exotic pets)
-decent weapons
-arows/gunpowder
-glass jugs
-tabaco
-candles
-books
-knives
Historical periods that im interested in- early middle ages, middle ages,15 century, 18 century, early 19 century,

 

[MineOwnKing]

A time traveller’s guide to medieval 14th-century shopping | History Extra


Not really my expertise, but some simple google searches should help you, such as this link.

 

[Nagash]

If you are working on historical fiction, I second MineOwnKing's advice - google is your friend. On the other hand, if you are attempting to write a story in a completely made up world/setting, you can assess the price of items and resources by determining their rarity, which doesn't have to be the same than in our world. You can index the price of objects on common, and less common metals used as a currency. Gold, silver and copper (to use a common monetary system in medieval fantasy) can therefore be used to trade goods and services of different worth. Of course, you do not have to stick to the idea of metallic currency; stones, amulets or what have you can be used in an attempt to build a monetary system.

Since I went for big-worldbuilding, I decided to re-assess the value of every common resources according to their rarity in context, with gold, silver and copper keeping a similar worth : wood, iron, clay, coal, wool, fur, and so on...

Btw, trying to keep a table of prices of the most important resources (metal, food, fabric, etc...) helps immensely in world-building as a whole. It helps a great deal to determine the natural wealth of nations, their economic history and their crafting/trade potential.

... I might have spent too much time on worldbuilding these days.

 

[skip.knox]

This is a question regularly asked by my students. It requires a whole lecture and even then I barely touch the surface, so this is going to be even more abbreviated.

Yes, you can find lists online. There are a couple of things to keep in mind as you do so. One, it's a different historical epoch. A staple such as salt had a different intrinsic value in 1216 than it does in 2016. A better example is pepper, which was very expensive in the Middle Ages but is cheap in the modern age. So you can't just take straight equivalencies. Think about it: how much would a Ford Mustang be worth in 1300?

Two, think more in terms of ratios. A horse might be worth five barrels of wine, or twenty-five hogs, or whatever. This quickly gets extremely complicated, though.

The third of the couple of things is this: prices were far more flexible in the Middle Ages than you might imagine. This was especially true of staples such as wheat. Prices could triple, quadruple or more within weeks if there was a crop failure. Moreover, prices were not usually fixed but were fluid, especially in the countryside. Even in towns, price regulations didn't really come into play until the very end of the Middle Ages.

So, go ahead and explore around. But don't be surprised or dismayed by the lack of consistency. Just grab the bits you want and know that at some time and place, that's probably what it went for.

If you want to go hardcore, here's a jumping-off point into all kinds of historical statistical databases.
List of Datafiles of Historical Prices and Wages

 

[valiant12]

, I decided to re-assess the value of every common resources according to their rarity in context, with gold, silver and copper keeping a similar worth : wood, iron, clay, coal, wool, fur, and so on...

My mc probably can't afford the horse he is riding in the beginning of the story considering that horses are really expensive in his homeland.The place simple cannot support a large horse population.

A horse might be worth five barrels of wine, or twenty-five hogs, or whatever

If that is the price of a horse in place were horses are common then my character definitely can't afford to buy a horse in his homeland.
I have decided to make my world economic not particularly realistic. I hope that if someday i publish my book, nobody would care that high quality weapons made with rare metals and decorated with gems,nice clothes,horses,plate armor made from gold , glass items and other things are more common than they should be.

 

[Nagash]

You shouldn't worry about making your economy completely realistic. Unless you're intending to write a fantasy series with a a great emphasis on trade and numbers (which I can't imagine being enjoyable, but who knows) the price of items and wealth in general will rarely appear in your story. Sure, he might buy a horse for two silvers - whatever this means in your world, the reader won't really make a big deal out of it, simply because he doesn't have an excel file of general prices in your world's economy. If you decide to fix prices for items and the worth of copper, horses, wine, leather what have you, you're only doing it for you and your need, as a writer, to have a precisely drawn trade structure. It will help making sense out of the ideas of wealth in your world. But the reader will most likely never get to a point where is has enough information to actually start deciphering numbers to judge if your world's economy is realistic or not.

Like most of the world-building you will achieve, it won't appear in its entirety in your novels. You just use it to build a base, upon which you can write stories others will read and appreciate because of how coherent and accurately sophisticated they are, thanks to the details you elaborated firsthand. Its "offscreen" work, if you will.