I wrote this comic nearly two years ago, but now that it's time for legendary magic items to appear in my campaign, I find myself having trouble following my own advice.
When you're designing a treasure hoard, and when you're trying to make flavorful magic items with interesting backstories for each member of a party, how do you manage to keep the legend lore interesting rather than an exposition dump?
If the items are meant to be legendary, introduce the legends in advance, preferably well before the party stumbles across them. Hopefully, the players will be excited to discover something they've been hearing about since they first started clearing giant rats out of basements. Of course, if you need an adventure hook, you could have them specifically go out looking for the items. The legends don't have to be about the items themselves; it would be fun to find gear that once belonged to famous adventurers of old. I know I'd be thrilled to find a cloak with Durvin Gest's nametag sewn into the lining.
Another approach would be to slow burn the reveal. It turns out (stop me if you've heard this one) that the simple Ring of Invisibility you've had for years does interesting things if you chuck it into the fireplace.
Object reading and similar abilities open up some interesting possibilities in the form of fragmentary impressions you can seed with clues about other mysteries the PCs might be investigating.