[larsdangly]

There was recently a discussion on another forum regarding the economics of medieval european settings, and their representation in the game 'Lion and Dragon'. The issue in that case was that swords were very cheap - seemingly insanely less expensive than a normal wooden shield. The author defended the position using data for prices of various items in late medieval and renaissance records. These data are hard to parse because of the large variance in value of currency with time and location. But it seems pretty clear that a common sword was a relatively inexpensive item - many, many times less expensive than even simple armor and not dissimilar in cost from farm implements.