I don’t think you necessarily need a big gold sink, you would be constantly “nickle & diming” the player to reduce the amount of gold they have (I remember Sacred 1 had a rare affix that took part of the damage from a hit from your gold before hp). I also mentioned here that you could have the crafting of rarer affixes from more common affixes using gold (& possibly something else), which would also help to link the prices of the various affixes on the auction house so they don’t go totally nuts.