I'm starting a site that will be dealing in high priced items (Tools and equipment). My products range in price from $1500 to $8400. I would expect most orders to be around $3000 or so. Anyway, I was wondering what everyone would recommend for a merchant account/gateway?

Im in the USA and only will sell to lower 48 states. The items, tools and equipment, will be shipped via freight carrier and will have a signed invoice when delivery is accepted. I'm just starting the company out

My suggestion would be to shop around for a real merchant account to be used with a gateway. I would also look for a gateway that offers tokenization so you can qualify for PCI SAQ A and still use your real merchant account. Make sure the gateway can support purchasing card data because my guess is that a significant portion of your customer base probably use purchasing cards and without this support, you can see 0.5% or more in your discount rate due to downgrades for not providing this data -- and with your average ticket, this can be VERY costly.

Hope this helps.