When should I start worrying about gear?

[Lillia]

-snip- Actually, in most cases the coins are worth significantly less than the NPC vendor price of the equipment. I usually check the market boards to see if there's a particularly cheap deal on the item in question (in which case I'll buy it there and then take the coins as a quest reward), but otherwise it's best to take the gear reward whenever it's better than what you currently have equipped.

Well we'd also probably wanna keep in mind that prices varies between servers.