I've noticed that, in general, stuff with a reccomended level on it
sells for appreciably less than similar items with no reccomended level.

Its pretty clear to me why; for people below the reccomended level, the
gear isn't as good as the similar, non capped, item.  This means twinks,
but it also means just people who have followed advice to farm
tradeskill items and cash in that way, who can afford to pay more, can
get the full stats of the item at a low level.

I went the other direction, for the most part, with my latest project;
my berzerk.  Stretching pp out, I bought a lot of reccomended level
gear; I found that it was usually deeply discounted, and I could what I
concluded was a much better value on it in many cases.

By this I mean that I could look  at the -current- stats on the item
based on my level, and look at other items with those same stats, and
end up paying roughly the same, if not less, for the reccomended level item.

But when I leveled up, the stats would go up, and up, and up, until I
reached the reccomended level for the item.

This meant I wasn't turning around every few levels with my larger
wealth pool and dumping it into replacing gear, and I wasn't spending
tons of time in bazaar mode trying to get rid of gear I was replacing;
that same item I bought at level 20 had level 30 stats at level 30, and
level 40 stats at level 40.

In fact, its not until after I hit the reccomended cap on an item that I
tend to start looking for a replacement... and then I often end up
getting a new item with an even higher reccomended cap.

Now the corallary to this is, I rarely end up buying anything with a
required cap.  This is because the items are often relatively wimpy by
the time I'm high enough level to actually use them; just as I replace
that level 40 reccomended cap item when I get to level 40 or so, I don't
even bother buying the required cap 40 item at 40; there's probably a 60
reccomended level item out there that costs the same and has the same
stats now... but much better stats as I level up.

I'd think that the required cap would dramatically reduce the price,
even more so than the reccomended cap, and I suppose it -does- do that,
as I've often looked at price and stats on an item and gotten excited
about the bargain, only to notice a required cap much higher than my
level.  But thus far I've found few items where the discounted price was
actually worth paying.

This isn't true of items with -both- fields, often an item which
requires 40 but reccomends 60 is the best buy of all, perhaps because it
takes a percieved doubled discount in utility with both tags on.

Grage, overgeared 55 Berzerk, Luclin