Interesting Non-Magical Treasure, Part I

What you say:

"You find an exquisitely carved ivory hairbrush, sized for a small human woman or perhaps an elf. There are floral patterns in it, including several different kinds of flowers, each picked out in a different inlaid precious metal. It's not radiating magic, but it's worth 1500 silver, easily, by your estimate."

What the players hear:

"Blah Blah non-magical comb worth 1500 silver."

and all they write down is:

Comb 1500 silver

Why do they do that?

Because the kids today just don't appreciate what we all went through, mapping the levels, statting the monsters, writing up detailed treasure, only to have them bash a hole in the wall, kill the monsters, and take the stuff and write it down as "comb, $1500."

Thing is, while equipment and magical items tend to be useful, non-magical, non-gear treasure tends to be seen as money. And treasure that is ultimately just useful as money is fungible. The description matters about as much as telling people in a modern-day game the exact breakdown of 20s, 10s, 5s, and 1s they find and who was Secretary of the Treasury and thus has signed the bills. Unless that information is plot-useful ("it's a fake!" "it's a clue to the killer" etc.), it's just extraneous detail to the players.

You might be thinking "But if I describe all the treasures this way, they will have to decipher for themselves which are the special ones, or use Player Agency to decide which ones are!"

That's true. But they equally might just do what I do, and my players do - write down the value and use their player agency to decide if everything could be special, nothing is special, and it's easier to just sell the crap and buy a new sword and some rations with it and look for magical stuff. Enough of that and you start describing only the special stuff, and we're back to square one.

So you want to break out of that fungible nature of money and make some of it special - make it something the players have to or want to deal with differently. That means it has to has some kind of value aside from money to be interesting.

How to make it interesting?

Think "does," not "is."

Interesting treasure is interesting not because it is well-described or unique, but because it does interesting things from a player perspective.

It has to be interesting in the sense of utility or in the sense of being a clue to something else valuable - whether that is more money or information.

Or there can be something interesting about how the treasure is used, sold, or transported.

It might have some kind of challenge to toting it, lifting it, or disposing of it.

If it comes down to just something to turn into coinage and split, it'll get turned into coinage and split, in my experience. So next time (possibly tomorrow), I'll take a look at some of the ways I think you can do this and keep the players interested in your "interesting" treasure.