A little further research has lead me to conclude that item lore preceded bt "#*" was never an indication of the of the ARTIFACT flag to begin with (as was proposed in
this thread). Rather, items with "#*" were both artifacts and lore items. The pound sign alone indicated artifact status. The current incarnation of the client no longer respects this specification anyway (which is why the PEQ item database is somewhat broken with regards to the ARTIFACT flag).
Anyway, I've updated the first post in this thread to reflect the correct information.