My wife and I are fairly recent newly weds and quickly realized my old queen's bowl shape wasn't working for us.  We've been to a few stores and tend towards the pillow top, but after reading around the forum, I'm not so sure.....  The current leader is a Serta (I think, I get them mixed up a lot) Willow Pond on super President's Day sale.  Super sale from it's original price, that is.  It's a king set, 20 year warranty (pro-rated after 10) and they "can't go any lower" than $1600.  

 

That still sounds a bit steep to me.  I bought my first mattress out of college for ~$600 and that lasted 7 years.  Does anyone have a suggested range for what I can expect to pay for a king set in Northern Virginia?  What really through me off is that the place I was looking also had plain firm mattresses for about the same price - I would have thought they'd be less.  Any suggested non-chain stores?  Or, for that matter, a place we could try out a latex mattress system in store??

 

I'm now heavily leaning towards a firm + "make your own" pillow top, but here are the basics on the Willow Pond we're looking at now.  The mattress is a dual layer with firm springs on the bottom and medium on top.  The pillow top is close to 6" total, with about 1.5" of latex, 1.5" of memory foam and 2 x 1.5" of PU foam.  If we do end up getting this, I'm planning to do surgery once the pillow top wears out.  May do it on the old one now, too....

 

Great forum, lots of good info.  Sorry for the newbie post, but if you've got any pointers, I'd appreciate it.  I've spent more time reading around the forum and will continue to.