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Hello!

I tried to find in the rulebook what is the supposed value of magical items and weapons. I understand that this items are not supposed to be sold, and that they should be created with the players in mind so they want to keep them. However I will start playing the game soon and I am pretty sure the players will ask me about the value of the items they will find on the way. This applies to Marvellous Artefacts, Wondrous items and Famous weapons and armour.

I assume that such items should have a value in treasure points, in case they want to get rid of any of them at some point (even if the exchange is for a small fraction of it's real value)

How do you guys or your LM handle it?

Thanks!

Have a look at page 164 of the official rulebook. This covers what you can do with magic items no longer wanted and returning them to the treasury. It should help the players understand they probably want to keep their current items to help unlock the qualities of any new item they may find.

In terms of monetary value and selling them, there is no mechanism for that in the rules as far as I am aware.

If a player really wants their character to sell a magic item, I would probably ballpark a value in Treasure as the maximum sell value. Of course, you then have to find someone willing and able to pay that much for the item. The treasure gained should be evenly split among the Fellowship. The better option is to gift the treasure to the character's home culture, or another character in the group.

How do you guys or your LM handle it?

My first reaction is to think, "This isn't in the spirit of TOR." But that's not useful, so I guess I would ask what this would look like if Tolkien wrote it into a story. I can't imagine it simply being a magic-item-for-gold transaction, with zero impact on the story. So I'd start working on a plot: who wants to buy this, and why, and what are they willing to do for it? How does this all go horribly wrong, with unintended consequences, thanks to the Shadow? What dilemma does this put the heroes in? Etc.

personally the item rules, in particular stuff like this

In game terms, upon their visit to the treasury of their
folk, Player­ heroes trade the number of Rewards pos­sessed by the piece of war gear given as a gift with the
activation of an equal number of qualities on a Famous
Weapon or Armour.

is a bit too board/video-gamey for my own taste.
Although they are a creative solution to the problems created by the base objective of avoiding a real monetary system.

For the specific case of item selling, yes I would go for something like treasure points.
That said, independent of how money is represented finding people that can actually afford items of that rarity is difficult, in particular in Eriador.
I would probably suggest combining it at least in a mix calculation of treasure points for the monetary side together with services rendered/access to information/people etc, so that the char has a story reason to give it away aside from reducing his load value.

Although they are a creative solution to the problems created by the base objective of avoiding a real monetary system.

While avoiding a real monetary system is one design objective of TOR, I suspect the motivation for constraining the game to one "feature" (e.g. magical qualities) per point of Valour is more about constraining power creep. Originally....pre-Rivendell...you simply got to choose either a cultural reward or a weapon/armour quality for each point of Valour. Then with Rivendell and "found" magic weapons and armor came two related problem:
1) Getting all those magical qualities at once kind of breaks the model.
2) What happens to that Keen, Grievous Woodland Bow you've invested in?
So at that point you could donate your old non-magical but still special weapon to a museum (or whatever) and convert those points into unlocking qualities of your new toy.

Yeah, it's a bit meta and artificial (what you call "video or board-gamey") but it sorta works as a game balance rheostat. I, personally, found it kind of fun to come up with in-game narrations to explain the metagame. YMMV.

Don't forget that raw money in the world of Tolkien poised you directly into trouble. Whenever there is money or treasure in mind, difficulties and misdeeds are sure to arise. After all, Battle of Five armies come from the will to seize the treasure of deceased Smaug. Thorin loose his temper when it come from Arkenstone. The Mayor of Esgaroth flee with the treasure of Smaug and die in the wild. Greed always the path to death in Middle Earth, Smaug slaughtered the dwarves when it comes to his pointed ears that they had grown rich... And son on, and so on...

Who is going to buy these treasures?

Weird gold economy is always going to be a headache to think about.

Who is going to buy these treasures?

Weird gold economy is always going to be a headache to think about.

Yes it is. And to sell a family heirloom to his legitimate owner is going to be fun. Personally, my player handle this sort of problem well, the 'seller' give the object, and in gratitude the 'buyer' hand a well deserved 'Gift'. Such is the way in my world.

Another way to consider this is question might be " What is the RANSOM value of a magical object or weapon?"

The Arkenstone was valued "above a river of gold" (IIRC) by Thorin.
But Bard's side agreed to it as one twelfth the gold & silver of Smaug's Hoard.

And a ransom gathering mission is a better adventure than a market auction!

(Just remembered all that Robin Hood was supposed to do to get all the gold to pay the ransom for King Richard!)