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The reason for that is simple: the Shroud itself did not seem to be all that spectacular -- it was an ancient piece of fabric with what appeared to be the image of a man on it. What changed all of this was the advent of photography. When the Shroud was first photographed at the end of the 19th century, the photographer developing the film produced a negative that had far more detail than the original image (the dark image of the Shroud that you often see in pictures is the negative, not the original).

The implication of this was immediately clear: The "negative" he was looking at was actually the real image, and the "original" image on the Shroud was actually the negative -- which meant that whatever process was used to produce that image was identical to a photographic process that the world had only discovered recently. This is what has generated so much interest in the Shroud since the 1880s.

The fact that the thing has been floating around for 1000+ years before its ever noted is very suspicious to my mind.

Oh, it was noticed. . . just as something else. The Mandilyon, the Image of Edessa, the Veronica. . . there were quite a few images of Christ made without hands. The one that is most interesting is that most of these are referred to as Tetradiplong. . . folded in four in two. . . showing the face of Christ, from which we get the image of Christ today and that face bears over 108 points of congruence in art with the Shroud of Turin and iconography since the 6th Century discovery of the Image of Edessa of Jesus Christ was re-discovered after being hidden in a wall to save it from Iconoclastic Arabs in the second Century. These include the wisps of hair (the blood stains), the forked beard and long hair (Christ was invariably shown shorthaired in the Greek style and beardless before that, looking more like Adonis), the square between the eyes, a slight swelling on the cheek, etc., all things seen on the Shroud and no where else. If you FOLD the Shroud in the four-fold in two, you get a flat fold with only the face showing. . . which mounted in a frame, matches exactly the description of the Image of Edessa. . . and the Mandilyon. . . as well as the Veronica. All three descriptions mention only the face of Christ displayed in a lattice framework. Remove the lattice work frame and unfold the cloth, a voilá, the Shroud is revealed. . .which apparently what was done in 944AD when the Image was carried from Edessa to Constantinople.

In fact, on August 15, 944AD, Gregory Referendarius, the Arch Deacon of the Hagia Sophia presented a Sermon on the arrival of the Image of Edessain Constantinople

. . . which is interesting because from then on, it was NEVER mentioned again, but the Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ was suddenly in the Inventory as one of the most revered relics of all Christendom in the Hagia Sophia! But the Image of Edessa was NOT.

In Gregory's Sermon, he speaks of the Image thus:

". . . A second light, immaterial and unique, came devotedly from you, an unexpected and material intertwining, natures distantly embracing heaven and earth, one living being made of two opposites: your human image, food from the clouds, a river flowing from a dry rock, and what is genuinely new under the sun, you were born a man in these last times from a virgin mother. You wiped clean the sweat of the nature you had taken on and what was wiped clean was transformed into an image of your unchanging form. . ."
Here Gregory is speaking of two opposites, front and back, both sides of His human image, then speaking of Christ's form, not face, or visage, a word denoting the entire body. And then later, Gregory shows he's seen the side wound on the Shroud as he speaks on seeing the source of the living waters and the blood of life and how they flowed from the same source, but were clearly separate, showing he could see what we know today to be the separate serum and the blood stains:
". . . falling like drops of blood, and by the finger of God. For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side.Both are highly instructive – blood and water there, here sweat and image. Oh equality of happenings, since both have their origin in the same person. The source of living water can be seen and it gives us water, showing us that the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from the side.

This was 320 years before the earliest 1988 C-14 dating of 1260AD and 400 years earlier than the averaged origin date of 1350AD. . . yet Gregory is describing the Shroud in accurate allegorical detail.