I do want to point out that my OD&D Dungeons game offers a magic item crafting option by NPCs. That’s a huge money sink right there, which has a direct effect on the game. Honestly I think that crafting should be a huge part of the gold sink game, but no one actually does it, despite random treasure not being a reliable method of getting useful items. And I think that it fits better in OD&D than it does in AD&D or other editions.

And I think that no one does it because Gygax makes it unreasonably punitive in later editions. The way to do it would be to take on a MU henchman, raise him in levels, and then store him in your stronghold to craft items exclusively. The whole 6-8 players that meet multiple times a week vs 3-4 players that meet only once at best, issue. 

In my game, I’m giving players a use for all their gold, and in fact incentivizing it as those who take advantage of this system will have better gear and items. I think that gamers actually have been trained erroneously by video games to assume that all their good equipment will come from monster drops, because spell research doesn’t exist in video games and crafting generally sucks.