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For all quotations of grain prices and quantities, as well
as bread prices and weights, see Dietrich Ebeling and Franz
Irsigler, Getreideumsatz, Getreide- und Brotpreise in Köln, 1368-1797 (Köln, 1976), which provides a detailed explanation of the
source material.
All data on price and quantity are drawn from sales of the
weekly market in Cologne, which served as a trans-shipment hub
for grain. Prices are weekly averages and quantities refer to
volume sold during an entire week. The weeks in each month are
numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These data reflect, insofar as
officials took care in recording them, the activities of a "free"
market. The data from the seventeenth century should be used
with special caution, because transactions from these years were
often negligently recorded.
All prices are quoted in monies of account of Cologne,
either in Gulden or Mark (1 Gulden = 4 Mark = 24 Albus = 288
Heller). For information about the bullion equivalents of these
monies of account or their exchange rates, see the data set named
Currency Exchanges (Metz).
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