I did a rethink of the coins and values here:
http://www.zanysite.com/tabletoprpgfun/2009/04/medieval-coinage-for-rpgs-up-with-role-playing-games/
Note that my weights don’t agree with some historical measures.

Gold almost necessarily (for game considerations) becomes the material for Crowns and above, because historically, Silver Crown values were usually based on their minted face value rather than primarily on their composition, and also for the most part didn’t occur until 1818. If you had a Silver Crown that was worth 5 Silver Shillings, it would (leaving debasement, shaving, etc. aside) have to weigh what five shillings do – while a Gold Crown would weigh only a fraction of that, due to Gold being worth more than Silver. Also, some pennies were struck out of bronze or copper or similar metal but that is also much later in history and their value was based on their legal denomination rather than composition.

For people who aren’t terribly concerned about each coin type’s individual weight and find it easier to have all coins weigh about the same and only one coin type for each value, Pennies could be Bronze but were originally Silver, Shillings were Silver, and Crowns were Gold. For further detail, there were Half-Crowns, Soverigns, Half-Sovereigns, Nobles and Half-Nobles, etc. – these were also almost always made out of Gold though a few were made of Electrum or other unusual and precious metal.

I found these to be great resources: http://herve.sors.free.fr/history.of.british.coins.htm and http://chestofbooks.com/finance/banking/English-Manual/Coins-Part-10.html

On a side note, where would you place the use of gold in this? I’d heard it was used as coinage, but don’t know what it’s equivalent might be.

I guess I just am intrigued by being able to somehow apply real-world equivalents to RPG stuff, to see how something would equate “in the real world”.

Interesting, thanks for the comments!

Still, a gallon of ale for less than £2…

In medieval times, you could get a gallon (8 pints) for a penny (about £20). That works out at £2.25 a pint, expensive, but not unreasonable in Central London!

I had found a site that tells the relative worth of current coins in the past, but it only went back to the 1900s.

From all the reading I did, it would seem to me that a typical peasant who made about one silver shilling per day would be like a modern “wage slave”, burger-flipper/store clerk, etc.

This would make that one penny his day’s wages, and for us in modern times, typical day wages are about $48.00 USD if you go with approximately $6.00/hour minimum wage, which may or may not be adjusted for taxes, etc.

$48.00 per day is probably about as low as you go without getting into part-time and waiters/waitresses whose wages are non-standard.

So as you can see, if you base your criteria solely on daily wage, 1 shilling = $48.00 if you want to keep it really simple. I have seen other more professional and thorough research which indicates most peasants were lucky to make half a silver a day (about 5 pence) but for the sake of argument and a nice even number, I think most of the *free* peasants probably made about a shilling a day, some more.

Now it takes 12 pence to make a shilling, therefore (48/12=) a penny (a 12th of a silver shilling) would have been worth about $4.00 USD, which would also nicely emulate the farthing, which were simply pennies cut into fourths, making each farthing worth $1.00 USD.

Going up to the pound or crown, the 20 silver shillings that make up a pound would equate to (20×48=960) $960.00 USD, which you could, without too much trouble, round down to $950 or up to an even $1,000.00 USD.

Obviously, farthings would be your dollar bill, and nearly everything, especially lesser items, costs at least that much, while pence are next up as more or less the $4.00/$5.00 bill, and are pretty common too, with a chicken or a night at an inn or such costing about one shilling.

Although there were other coins in some eras and cultures between and beyond the shilling and the pound, the standard European currency system was: Farthing, Pence, Shilling, Pound.

The Pound, however, was *never* a regularly produced or minted coin, as only royalty or extremely wealthy nobles would ever have the need for it – instead, the pound or as some people think of it, the crown, was actually an artificial “placeholder” or “hypothetical coin” invented by medieval accountants for large on-paper sums, so the typical fantasy game idea of people walking around with bags full of gold or even silver crowns/pounds is, at best, a product of lack of research.

Thank you for the question, I hope even this late, it was of some interest to you! =) -JP