Russian Wootz

[Jeff Pringle]

Seriously, with the exception of the esthetic factor, what, in your opinion, is the big deal?

Never underestimate the esthetic factor
But really, a well-made wootz blade should be able to take a sharper edge and require less resharpening than plain or patternwelded steel, while retaining the same degree of flexibility, and that is probably what got people's attention back when swords were an important survival tool. Those are hard features to demonstrate in an ebay photo. Due to all that extra carbide, wootz can do some things like scratch glass, which regular steel is less capable of - that is a good demonstration that the edge is harder than steel, but Joe Average might not connect that with sharper and longer lasting.
At the time, it was a better way to make steel, but it became out dated technology and ceased to be made.
I'm sure there were a lot of poorly-made wootz blades, too, and brittleness is the first fault you'd see show up if the manufacture went awry.
I think the big deal stems from latter-day rarity and mystery, since when the European scientists were trying to improve steel making they tried to figure out wootz and couldn't - except for Anosov, who said he did figure it out but somehow did not become rich selling swords to the army...his timing was bad, they had already switched to guns I guess