Remember, the Greeks and Trojans were wearing Bronze armor, not steel,
and using bronze blades. Bronze was (and is) a very expensive metal
because it used the exotic metal Tin as part of it's makeup. Only
sources were a small amount in Turkey and major deposits in Ireland,
Wales, and southern Britain. Even in Greek times, the Phoenicians were
exporting Tin from the British Isles, which was a heck of voyage for
ships not much bigger than a normal day sailer these days. The hunt for
tin is thought to be what drove the development of commercial trading in
Western Europe.

Those Homeric heroes were wearing the worth of 10 healthy slaves or a
good sized farm on their backs. If they could claim one of those, the
average foot soldier was set for life.

Even more recently scavenging battles was a major source of wealth. The
steel scavenged from Waterloo was the basis of new industrial production
in Belgium (not to mention the "scrap metal" German weaponry that was
the basis of Israel's war for independence).