I’ve put together a basic working prototype of a project for a client using those two components and the most basic connections to read NFC cards. I’ve been looking around for some place to make a custom PCB with those two components and ideally a custom antenna built into the custom PCB board at a specific form factor.

I get that the custom antenna design/tuning (two variants sizes) and integrating those two components however conveniently would be the most expensive part, but I had a conversation today with a ‘partner’ of a pretty well known fab-house that quoted me $200K USD for doing the “design-work” necessary to consider producing them at scale.

So, AITA and utterly out of the loop on custom PCBs, or was that guy fully trying to screw me over?