Honestly, after reading over the thread, I gotta go with viagra and similar drugs. Aphrodisiacs are something that, I think, every culture in every time has obsessed over. One real plus is that if you have yourself set up as sole source, your customers are going to be reluctant to see you killed for any reason.
Kings, like most men, value hard-ons above just about everything.
Hmmm. All the windows, mirrors, and most of the dishes in your house would be pretty valuable. We have stacks and stacks of porcelain corelle plates and bowls and saucers that are pure white, some with a little blue decoration. China was a luxury imported good from, you know, China, and the manufacture of porcelain was a closely guarded trade secret.
Here in 2014 we look at the repetitive identical mass-produced patterns and think they’re boring and machine-made. To the 14th century view the absolutely identical shapes and patterns and flat white body are marks of quality.
If you could go “shopping” for a melee weapon before going back, what would be the best one to take? A sword is nice, useful, pretty dangerous, and of obvious value in the marketplace, but how effective is it likely to be to a 21st century person without a significant amount of sword-based martial arts training? I would think a veteran knight could probably dispatch you pretty easily, even though your sword might be of higher quality. Certainly you wouldn’t survive combat with two or three of them.
Would an axe be more effective? Heavy-ass club? Should you go with a heavy weapon like a broadsword or two-handed battle axe that’s harder to use but more effective, or should you go for a lightweight weapon you can dance around with?
Any member of the fighting class will kill the shit out of you with great ease no matter what you choose. To a 21st century person these things are no more than hobbies.
My collection of ordinary fruits, vegetable, herb and flower seeds bought from a hardware store would be a wonder of exotic plants collected from around the world, carefully selected to produce the likes of which they’ve never seen.
To make them seem extra valuable they come in packets with full color pictures of how gorgeous they are and because the seeds are in such small quantities they must surely be rare, perhaps magical. Only a king could afford such a treasure.
I was going based on value, not necessarily utility. For me, and MrDibble a sword would actually be useful. For someone without training … not so much. But you could probably sell something like an Albion-made sword for a decent amount. The metallurgy would be first-class, the craftsmanship on a par with anything some of the best smiths could turn out. Something from Museum Replicas, on the other hand, would be worth very little as some of the basics like balance and distribution of mass aren’t usually done right in most of their weapons, and the tangs are usually welded and threaded pieces of crap.
Yep. Like I said, I’ve done martial arts for over half my life, and I’d give myself about a 50/50 chance of actually living through my first fight with anyone with training on a par with a yeoman. I’d be a very lucky fucker if I managed to not die by fighting a guy with real training. They fought for a living, and their recreation was basically more training for fighting. It would be like a weekend warrior having a pick-up game with someone from <insert sports league here> and expecting to win.
Knights did things for shits and giggles that would make most people piss themselves in fear. Boar hunting, for example, consisted of chasing a several-hundred-pound wild pig who can run faster than you can legally drive in a school zone and which has tusks the size of good-sized daggers through the woods with a bunch of dogs, getting him nice and pissed off, making him feel cornered enough to charge toward one lucky guy who got to stand in front of him with a spear and (hopefully) kill the thing with it.
Facing a boar rush probably felt like playing chicken with a small car, except you’ve got no car and you’re holding a bloody broomstick you’re going to try to tag the driver in the face with while trying not to get run over.