I'd agree that the best/easiest option would be to just not consider +1 weapons magical. The base +1 weapon to attack and damage is a masterwork weapon. It's only once you start adding the special abilities onto it, or move the bonus up to +2 or higher, is when it becomes magical.
After all... if magical weapons (and items in general) are supposed to be rare... rare enough that you don't find them for sale in most large towns or cities... that means that they are not being made by wizards that often. And if that's the case, and making a magical weapon takes a bit of doing... why would any wizard build the crappiest magic weapon there is and not take the extra effort to add a few more things or abilities to it?
The only reason you would make the simplest and most basic enchantment on a magic weapon would be either you are learning the basics of enchantment and practicing until you become proficient enough make more powerful items... or you are churning them out quickly for the money. But if that is the case... +1 magical weapons
should be found around major cities that have large wizard communities or universities to be purchased.
So by my way of thinking... +1 weapons should mean one of two things. Either they are the weapons that have been made masterwork by master swordsmiths and are purchaseable for good amounts of gold... or they are the the "practice enchantments" for wizards learning how to build more powerful items (and thus these magical weapons
should be found for sale in most major cities as these wizards want to get cash back for the money they spent to enchant them in the first place.)
I would say that I do like the "practicing enchantments" idea... because it gives a better explanation as to why you would find magical versions of lesser armors and weapons. One question that always seemed to come up was when people would ask why a wizard would ever make a +1 set of leather armor, rather than use their building time to make a set of +1 studded leather armor (since studded leather is obviously better armor and thus worth more overall.) If you subscribe to the "practicing enchantments" ideas to +1 magic bonuses... then you can explain it by saying that practicing wizards have to try out their enchantments on every type of weapon and armor so that they can be assured that what they are doing and learning actually works. The same way video game designers have to build and QC games using all manner of PC, from the highest end machine to the lowest, crappiest one. Your magical formula needs to be so solid and good that it can be placed on a mace, just like it could be placed on a flail, just like it could be placed on a maul.
Plus the fact that it's probably easiest/cheaper for the starting wizard to acquire lower-end armors and weapons to try and enchant, especially when they are learning and still prone to mistakes. So there really *should* be all kinds of +1 daggers and quarterstaves out there as no wizard learning the art of enchantment is gonna start his work straight at the greatsword or plate mail. That's a waste of resources if he screws it up.
