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Question: I was thinking about limiting the gold piece value of purchaseable items in the nearby town, outside the dungeon. What is an appropriate gp-cap for items? Anyone out there tried anything like this? Did it work well? Not so well? I'm trying to go for that "old-school" feel, where players had to either find cool magic items or make them themselves. Pointers?

It depends on how much time and effort you want to put into this sort of thing--not just deciding what the limit is, and what items are available, but how much "down time" will be spent in town, selling items, commissioning items, and so forth.

From your description, it sounds like you want to keep the gp limit relatively low. I wouldn't drop it too far, or the players will be inclined to go farther afield to a large city to buy and sell stuff.

If you want to save time yet maintain control of what they get, consider having a merchant or merchant group approach the PCs, with an offer to sell items at a certain percentage of their value, and in return they can put feelers out or commission items on behalf of the PCs. Having a middleman saves a lot of time spent haggling with merchants, and allows the PCs to exceed local gp limits, as the merchants can move items to more distant locations where they are more likely to sell. PCs can either loaf in town while stuff gets done, or head back out for an adventure, knowing that their items will be waiting for them the next time they head to town.

One good way to introduce something like this is to have the PCs save an ambushed caravan traveling through the wilderness area. Saving the merchants' lives is a good way to get a better price on the goods they sell to the merchant, as well.

As for maintaining the "old school" feel, one quick and dirty method is to come up with a percentage that a given item requested will be unavailable in any given week...say, 10% per 1,000 gp value, or portion thereof, and double this for items not in the DMG (to an overall maxiumum of 95%, unless you simply rule it cannot be found). You could then supplement by throwing in a few exotic/nonstandard items on a special list that might exceed these values. Anything from my "Bits of Magicka" line (through Tabletop Adventures) would be excellent for this sort of thing.

As for having stuff made...I actually don't see this as "old school," since item creation rules were poor to nonexistent prior to 3rd edition. Considering the likely size of local communities, I'd say that anything more powerful than, say, a +1 weapon, or anything not in the DMG, should be impossible to get made unless the PCs can provide needed components, spells, and the like for it.

However, you might introduce higher-level NPCs in the wilderness who can do better stuff. The hags and the druid are both good possibilities. Or maybe there's someone at the camp where the escaped prisoners and exiles live.

Good luck!