I would be very grateful if anyone knows any links that would answer my title?
I understand the reason why there tends not to be much on display is due to the better quality suits surviving as display pieces, and that the poorer stuff would just be melted down post battle or later when the metal was needed for other stuff etc.
The only example ive ever seen was from a European mass grave, where a sabaton had been been left on the body. It was totally functional but looked like it had been made by an ork, and I'm fascinated by the idea of the 'everymans plate' or weapons and would be fascinated of different cultures examples.
Many thanks in advance folks! :)
A fantastic (and thoroughly under-appreciated) resource for the study of plate armour is Matthias Goll's PhD thesis from Heidelberg "Iron Documents. Interdisciplinary studies on the technology of late medieval european plate armour production between 1350 and 1500": https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00017203
This takes the form of a database (and a huge one at that) containing several thousand pieces of armour from museum collections across the world, with detailed catalogue information and pictures of each piece piece. Goll's database is startlingly comprehensive and he didn't try to only select the nice elements of the collections he's documented, so while it naturally does have a bias towards fancier pieces, there's a wide mix if you dig through it far enough. The one thing to be aware of is that he did not exercise much judgement on the matter of potential fakes, so there are pieces in the catalogue which are of questionable status.