Quote:
Originally Posted by Sindri
... Costing more is an advantage when you're trying to distinguish yourself and more maintenance is a mild downside but also discourages their use with the sort of person who doesn't have servants. Also, unlike a gold-plated version of a regular firearm a wheellock requires different training which also helps to distinguish the wielder. While there's a lot of not-gauche things you can do with the exterior an intrinsically more expensive lock mechanism allows you to invest more in the weapon while maintaining good taste.
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Just to pick up on this, weapons as status symbols tended not to be status because of inherent complexity or expense of basic manufacture (that said if new technology was fashionable you might well be invested in paying over the odds for it), but because they were bespoke or blinged up.
Wheel lock of flint lock you can always find someone* willing to make you a unique one for a vast price, making the inherent difference in pricing irrelevant. The fact that GURPS uses CF as a multiplier isn't actually that matched by real world decoration
You also have to remember that unlike melee weapons that became more and more decoration only, the nobility/gentry kept hunting so prestige, status firearms still had to work. It might be embarrassing to have slightly out of fashion decoration on your gun, but of you can't get it to fire when you peers (or god help you the next tier up) are looking at you is also not good.
*and sometimes the cache of the artist/workman was also a draw in and of itself (that you paid for). You want a gun engraved by Gustav of Munich, even if Helmut in your house hold can do a decent approximation of Gustav's style.