If Ishuli forgets, I'll nag him.

That said, I used a few extra tools and checked on a number of these items. There's a *lot* of these that I'd be uncomfortable or unable to change due to one (or more) of the following reasons.

1) Progs or quests involving the items which for whatever reason might require duplicate items.
2) Some of these are duplicate items, but within different (though often nearby) areas. There's not really a safe way to do this without just duplicating the item within the new area, otherwise it risks the game crashing if you're not careful. Think...random Udgaardian patrolman who happens to be visiting Seantryn Modan or something, vs. being on the trails.
3) Many of these are *truly* different items, just writer A and writer B both decided they wanted a pair of blue leggings in their area, or a steel sword, for example. Particularly with simple gear, it's not surprising that four different areas have "a steel sword" in them.
4) The classic example of the pitch-black ring. These are three different items of different mobs, and it's sorta the treasure hunt/prize that the tougher mob has an upgraded version of the item. Any area written today probably wouldn't let this fly, but I'm loathe to suddenly change decades-old areas and muck around in someone else's creative works.


Finally, there *are* the cases where it does appear that the writer used copy/paste to create individual vnum gear for each NPC, and those I wouldn't mind clearing up. I'll check back when I have a little more time myself, and/or check in with Ishuli, but sofar there's been maybe...two that appear to truly be duplicated gear.