avarice blade is useless as an early gp10 item as it doesnt build into anything useful unless your an ad melee assassin.

here are some concepts.
make the executioners calling build from an avarice blade (instead of brawlers fist) and a vamp scepter, with a third item. like a pickaxe or a long sword or zeal/dagger etc.
EG
cost 2700g (525)
makeup:
avarice blade (750g)
vamp scepter (450g)
pickaxe (975g)

stats:
18% lifesteal
35% crit chance
40 attack damage

Unique active:
when activated your attacks reduce all healing effects on target by 50% for 4 seconds, times stacks up to 8 seconds. (effect lasts for 8 seconds with a 40 second cooldown)

btw i just pulled the numbers out of my ass so there probably terribly balanced.

The limit on gp10 build paths is intentional. Ranged carries have no trouble farming and don't need the gp10 as much as melee champions that are easily denied.

So does the Bilgewater Cutlass.

Avarice Blade, Philo Stone, Kage's Lucky Pick, and Heart of Gold used to not upgrade into anything at all, the thinking was generally that getting GP 10 was strong enough to not need it, you're supposed to get gold to buy items, not buy items to get gold for the most part anyways.

Seriously though, if you take into account the value of Critical Strike Chance you only spend 175 gold to get the GP/10 bonus, with the same cost for Heart of Gold. Kage's requires a little more gold for the passive. 175 isn't that much for the GP/10 bonus at all, and games have to go on long enough for you to actually need to sell the item will allow you to more than pay for the items original cost.

I would like to see items with greater slot efficiency with life steal though, at least when Starks was around I could build for AD or AS. Exacutioners, Bilgewater, and Wriggles all end there build well under 2k gold, which is a little lackluster compared to so many 3k+ items. Would like to see Exacutioners build into something.