Did you happen to know that a replica — a fully functional one, apparently — of Edinburgh museum's Pembridge Great Helm can be purchased from one of several retailers? I didn't, until recently. Fantasy swords I was familiar with, as I have held a few belonging to a friend, but mock armor made with regard to historical accuracy never occurred to me as a commodity; though perhaps it should have.
Weapons and armor of infantry and cavalry up to the martial domination of firearms have always been a fascination of mine; a pursuit more enthusiastic than scholarly, certainly, but long-standing. As much as I have done to learn and memorize the protective wear of a soldier, particularly the European knight and the evolution of his complement, I have drawn from the most persuasive accounts those many errors accumulated between the incorporation of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy and present day, the course of over a millenium. Particularly grating for historians is the impression that a knight was clad in plate armor from the start (he wasn't, not until about the 15th Century) and that a full suit was so cumbrous that, as depicted in Laurence Olivier's Henry V, he mounted a horse only with help from a crane — a fabrication dispelled as easily as donning a suit and moving with no more restrictions imposed than if in fireman's gear.
Best understood, of course, when the armor has been pounded into shape as closely to the original. Were it possible we might be spectators of the chain-sword-arrow-and-axe engagement documented in the Bayeux Tapestry — if not for the ablative carnage that was Hastings. So for a few hundred dollars the steel cap and nasal protecting a man's head and face from intentional harm can be yours, and Hastings comes to you. The cynic might just see metalworking curios. For others, between the dilettante, the smith and the scholar, history is not only tangibly preserved but a lost era revived.