I had a few items. A couple got stolen when one character was captured in battle, but my Broken Sabre of Flame I got up to +11 prestige. And it was an almighty pain, by the end it spent more time with adventurers being repaired than being carried by my character before it simply decayed too fast to even be repaired. I couldn't even take it with me when we marched to battle for a couple of weeks without risking it falling apart before I could get back to find someone to fix it. Cost a lot more to repair it than I ever spent on buying one. That was over 6 months ago now, I've never bothered with an item again simply because they aren't worth the grief (to me at least).
I think the price of items varies greatly from island to island, I didn't see any being sold for 50 gold on FEI, 20 gold was more common.
