A few weeks ago just while browsing idly, I came across a website that sold full suits of armour. Now, there are lots and lots of websites that sell them - many of them offer identical, mass-produced suits without much historical realism. Here is one example of such a website; there are about a hundred others and they all sell the same suits, at prices that vary between $2,000 and $10,000. Now, the website that I saw was not one of those sites. It offered suits that were much more expensive - like, $20,000 and up. I think the suits that I remember seeing were in the Gothic and Renaissance style, and some of them had close-helms. For several thousand dollars extra you could get engraving or embossing on the armour which I remember being fairly elaborate.

The suits that were displayed were just for the purposes of demonstration - the site said that the armour would be custom-made to fit the customer once it was ordered. But this site was different from higher-end armourers like James Arlen, Robert MacPherson and the like, in that it seemed to have flat prices for everything offered, rather than leaving that unsaid and to be determined at a later date. The armour wasn't exactly custom made - just custom fitted. And if I recall there were several options available for each suit, like blackened steel, blued steel, and engraving or gilding.

It was a strange site, for the reasons I mentioned before. I can't remember if it was the site of a "name" armourer or not, but the way they presented the products was more similar to the sites that sell complete suits of mass-produced armour - yet the prices were far higher than any of those.

For the life of me I can't remember what this was, and an hour or so of searching has brought up nothing. Does anyone have any idea? The clues: high prices (over $20,000.) FLAT pricing. Many images of products. Several options offered (gilding, bluing, engraving.) Anyone know? Oh - one other thing, I think it may have been a British website or somewhere else in Europe.