I meant that to be a but more rhetorical, but it does express my point. In the past it was far more expensive, and other than the assumption of how much of the

I meant that to be a but more rhetorical, but it does express my point. In the past it was far more expensive, and other than the assumption of how much of the cost is the final stage labor and how much is materials cost (and to some degree labor cost, which also has changed over time), the same calculations can be used roughly to approximate relative cost of items in other time periods. In the past, a vastly higher proportion of the cost would have been base materials, but also they might take some of that in-house, if there aren't industries to support manufacture of materials to a form better suited to the final stage of manufacture. What if the cost of the steel going into a modern sword was something like $10k-$20k because it was so costly to harvest and process because of labor? That then makes you wonder why steel is so expensive, and now you're using economics as a window to peer into into how ancient economies worked. :)