Looting and selling valuable equipment is a key revenue generator for PCs in many RPGs, but how did this work historically? I have a vague idea from fiction that when armies brought home large amounts of looted equipment to eg. Rome, the supply officers may have auctioned it off in lots. If so, then what? Barbarian weapons wouldn't be used by the legions, but did some supplies filter back to the military apparatus? Outside of simple trophies, what objects had a useful life beyond their initial owner?
On a smaller scale, the peasants in The Seven Samurai murdered and looted wandering swordsmen, but what would they have done with the equipment after storing it? I'd assume they would launder the goods through shady merchants, but the peasants don't seem sophisticated enough to get away with that for long without getting caught and hanged, or cheated and extorted. Maybe that part's fiction. How did it work in reality for bandits, scavengers, etc. trying to sell dozens of military weapons and suits of armor?
Are there any historical references on the subject of the economics of battlefield loot, from any culture before the 1600s or so?
