One of the things I find both a little disappointing and maybe inviting, from a world building perspective, is the rather poor selection of items in 5E D&D. I can see they are trying to rein in the crazy magic of some of the previous versions, and simplify the rules and mechanics of fighting and such - but one of the side effects is that there is a fairly small list of weapon and armor types. If you want to limit magic, but still offer interesting things for people to find, it starts to be hard to do. You can work in expensive items - pate mail armor is obvious (which is why I made a set of plate one of the main parts of the treasure when we went into the dwarf mines), but it's one of the few items that works that way. There are ways - silvered weapons work - you can offer things that are particularly well made, which are more expensive. But they don't have mechanical advantages. A set of gilded armor might be worth 5 times as much as a regular set - but doesn't protect you any more. (Silver, at least, gives you the ability to hit some things - lycanthropes, some undead, and so on.)
So the challenge is to find things that are interesting for people to find, or carry. You can do some of it by giving things histories - names for swords or daggers, or stories behind them ("this is the sword carried by Lord Seamus McGlue at the battle of Old Navy"), or details and ornamentations. Those things create a sense of detail in the world - they don't really give any mechanical advantages, and that's a bit disappointing. I wish there were rules for things like masterwork weapons (from 3E) - or for more variation in weaponry. A way to distinguish a scimitar from a cutlass, a broadsword from a longsword, or rules to use all the 50 varieties of polearms some of the older books described. There may be ways to do some of this - distinguish a throwing dagger from a stabbing one, say - creating a non-magical +1 for a throwing dagger maybe (balanced by something like, -1 damage when not thrown; something like that.)
It's something to think about. And another thing to think about might be working out more story hooks for objects. Not always with weapons - but maybe there are repercussions to wearing a cloak or suit of armor that once belonged to Lord Seamus McGlue. There is some room in the DMG for things like works of art - some of that could be interesting. I poked at this a bit - the magic dagger belonging to the dead magic user, that is an heirloom, worth more for its place in their family than as a magic weapon. And there is Inky's suit of armor - which promises something, somewhere along the line. It's all something to work on.
I was thinking about this a little trying to add treasure to the adventure I'm working on. I didn't want to toss out magic items, but felt something more than gold would be good. There was a show on National Geographic the other day about a horde of Anglo-Saxon treasure that was found. There were all these ornate settings and so forth, and I thought that would be a neat way of individualizing treasure. But it's all very visual. We saw a few episodes of a blacksmithing show that had the same effect. They would craft a blade of out weird material, then build a hilt for it, etc. The final two contestants would be given a week to craft a weapon of historical significance to find the winner. They'd both be making the same weapon, but they end up looking completely different. Again, there is a visual element that seems to fit. Unfortunately, it doesn't really come into game play unless it gets scripted in as a story element. That has potential within the game with backgrounds and rivalries, the items become identifying markers of people or stories. I'm sure there are ways of building game play around those possibilities, but it takes on a different level of character development and game description.
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