Galbadia Garden is known as the world leader in the development of military magical items. The quality of its weapons, armor, and items is known across the world and its neutrality allows it to sell its items to any buyer, anonymity guaranteed. While the Galbadia Republic does not like the idea of the garden selling items to its enemies, it knows that if it should try to stop the garden from going about its business, then the garden will refuse to sell items to the republic. Instead, the leaders of the republic try to intimidate the other world powers into not buying anything from the garden, reserving nearly all of the magic items for itself. So far Galbadia Garden has not complained, but it was just a matter of time before it did so, if it had not been for the War of the Gardens, which resulted in the takeover of Galbadia Garden by the republic's military.
There are three main categories of magic items available through Galbadia Garden. The first group contains offensive items, such as magical weapons, and there are generic magic items as well as some specific items. The second group consists of defensive items, such as generic magical armor and helmets, or specially designed armor like the Galbadia military uses. The last group of magic items is for miscellaneous items that do not fit into either of the other categories. Some of these miscellaneous can be considered offensive or defensive in nature, but they do not really fit into the other two categories as easily as weapons or armor.
The actual power level of the different items varies considerably, with some being much more powerful than others. The minimum level of experience that each item is usually assigned to is listed in its description. Students from Galbadia Garden, regardless of level, have access to nearly all of these items for purposes of training and familiarization, but the more powerful items are usually reserved for difficult assignments or upper level mercenaries working with the gardens.
While the sale of the magical items is a very important source of income for Galbadia Garden, they have always resisted create set prices for any of the magic items, preferring to base their costs on the size of the purchase, the intentions of the buyer (if stated), and the relative wealth of the buyer. For example, the Galbadia Republic buys lots of magic items from the Garden, so they get a discount from that, but they are very wealthy, which causes the Garden to charge them more then, for example, an individual buying the same amount. But in an effort to keep prices relatively close, Galbadia Garden has created four different categories for an items's price. The lowest category is for minor items and ranges any price up to 50,000 Gil, medium items fetch a price between 50,001 and 250,000 Gil, major items fetch between 250,001 and 1,000,000 Gil, and items designated as artifacts are sold at prices above 1,000,000 Gil. In specific cases, artifacts are not sold at all to any customer and for any price, the Lion Heart Gunblade is a good example of this.