There are plenty of uptime answers to Gold. You are just so fixated on your solution that you are wilfully ignoring them. Money is a form of power in a world that doesn’t have magic items. Just extrapolate.
No my point is that you and all the rest sound like that Monty Python parrot sketch.
"I'd like a cone of strawberry icecream"
"We don't have any strawberry"
"But you used to"
"Here have some chocolate instead"
"No, I'd like strawberry just like you used to serve"
"Maybe lemon? No? Vanilla? Fudge?"
None of your arguments even address that the game used to have rules and guidelines for utility-based magic item pricing, for those of us with no other desire for our loot than trade it for meaningful monster killing upgrades so we can get back to the published adventure at hand.
Now it doesn't.
All those other options might be very worthy indeed, but they do not compensate for the loss of an entire playing style. If you can find use of them, all the power to you.
But don't claim my need is filled, and don't offer these other suggestions as if they can compare.
"Just extrapolate" - a slap in the face. Making a proper upgrade to the 3.x DMG system is hard and time-consuming and something I want to give money to WotC for doing for me.