Firearms are a great example as noted above (if I'll take the risk of going a bit OT again
)
I have the Arisaka Type 99 that my Dad brought back from occupation duty from Japan. It doesn't have any associated 'war trophy' documents (which do add modest collector value when present), but it's valuable to me - my
Dad brought it back.
However, if I was to sell it, I would never get anything beyond its current base market value.
If you go to a gun show, you can find other Arisaka Type 99's for sale - all for comparably low prices relevant to a relatively 'rough' & common milsurp shooter.
The funny thing here - they
all were brought back as war trophies, so 'my' story is of no monetary value - the rifle is worth no more than the tens/hundreds of thousands of other Arisakas that have beeen brought back. On the other hand, the very very few Type 99's that were unissued and/or unfired - now
those have considerable collector value and demand a
substantial collectors premium.
I think that there is a huge difference between a hypothetical WWII firearm brought back by Patton for example (very very few) and the vast numbers of WWII Mausers that saw honorable service in the Wermacht - all of these have stories but virtually none of them occupy a higher pedestal than the millions of others that are currently in circulation.
To bring this example back to flashlights, the SF L2 my wife carried in Afghanistan has virtually nothing in common with anything from TR's 'Rough Riders', Patton, or the Apollo Astronauts. It has more in common with the hundreds of thousands of WWII Mausers that were brought back after WWII, if that. And those don't get any collector premium because each individual item is rather indistinguished - I can
guarantee that this particular SureFire L2 didn't get any combat or glory.