Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel
I happened to be reading through a recently acquired Osprey book (MAA494 Forces of the Hanseatic League 13th–15th Centuries) and noted that the city of Hamburg retained a master crossbowmaker who was expected to produce four weapons a year and paid a bonus for anything over...
Making a few assumptions about what a master craftsman might get paid, that would seem to put the modern equivalent price of a crossbow at perhaps some £10k. Which seems a lot...
Am I missing something?
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Yes, if there is no typo
the ordinary price for a crossbow in the 13th century was between 25 and 80d English in a world where most workers earned 2d to 6d English a day. Serious orders for arms and armour were measured in the dozen or score, and 13th century merchants would happily deliver orders of a few thousand sets of equipment if you gave them enough lead time to send messages to all their contacts and buy up used gear. So a shop which makes four crossbows a year is not really making crossbows as a full-time business.