From my communications today with Spes, these items will not be available for sale just yet, and they will give me some heads up and information closer to the time. As soon as I know anything, I will let you all know!
(and of course, Corsair's Wares will be retailing them as soon as we can get our hands on them

)
As far as I can surmise from various people's comments, these are the general opinions:
- with regard to the jacket, the plates do provide a bit of extra protection, but they don't cover all the important areas and can be easily broken off from the jacket. What is nice is the leather facing for the jacket, apparently this is good and an improvement. I have no idea about price yet.
- with regard to the gloves, I hear that they are roughly on par with the Absolute Force gloves (broadly speaking). They cover less of the hand and provide less protection than the AF gloves but the material is better and more durable. It sounds like they are not suitable for anything involving a complex hilt, so they would really only be of interest to the longsworders, messer people and perhaps the sword and buckler people amongst us (compared to the Ensifers which can be used inside sabres as well; I haven't heard about the AF gloves and complex hilts at all). In terms or price, it seems the price of these gloves might be broadly in line with the price of the AF gloves through Corsair's Wares (£120), but this might change depending on what Spes decides in the coming few days/weeks.
So what I'm saying to my Academy members at the moment is that the standard Spes jacket is probably still the best bet, and that until we have more information about the Spes gloves the AF gloves are probably still the best way to go (unless people want to commission Ensifers).