occam
Adventurer
I thought that those guidelines were understood to be complete bumpkiss when paired up against a character who had gained loot via leveling up and adventuring?
That, in general, the new character will have fewer pieces of higher level equipment, and an adventure-built character will have a more expensive, and wider array, of lower level items.
That may be. I was going to mention that, but didn't want to complicate the issue. I wasn't speaking to the accuracy of the starting gear guideline as it might reflect actual play, even for a DM strictly abiding by the parcel system; it's just that it's the only wealth-by-level guideline we have in 4e.
You can view the wealth-by-level numbers I gave as lower bounds. If you need upper bounds, then you could total up the value of treasure parcels for each level and divide by 5. I'll let someone else work on that.