Realistic equipment for a new barb

[rawfocat]

I'm planning to roll up a barb soon and I want to begin stock-piling weapons for him. So basically I want to build the (now) classic max-dps guy. Everyone knows Argo needs one more TWF dwarven barb. Where I am at is piercing specced or dwarf with dwarven axes. So it looks like I am compairing picks or rapiers to dwarven axes.

I am not going to spend the time or plat to get 2 deathnips or 2 w/p items, but I can fairly easily get +(1-3) bursting axes (hopefully of pure good).

My question is can anything in the piercing category complete price-wise with axes? My general rules are I must be able to purchase them on the AH from less than 2x their base values (100,000gp for a 50,000gp weapon) by watching every day for say 2 weeks.

[tihocan]

Picks > rapier for barbarians, except for "special" crit effects like smiting / banishing / puncturing.
Now, I don't know about the axes market, but the picks one is very limited. Heavy/Light picks don't drop that much and thus are not available in huge quantities on the AH.
The good news is also so far not that many people have been using picks, so when someone offers one at a decent starting price, it's not that hard to get it. I find that a lot of people have unreasonable expectations though when it comes to setting a starting price ;)
Note: this is based on observations made on Thelanis.

[Shade]

If your just comparing standard lootgen dps weapons, well dwarven axes are superior in all cases. Then also to compare availability, i'd say that dwarven axes are on the AH in more then a 2 to 1 ratio vs heavy picks... Last time i chedk there was 9 pages of dwarven axes and 2 of heavy picks (on khyber)

But yea if you go dwarf its pretty simple:
d10+2dmg +2 attack, 20x3
vs
d6 +0, 20x4
=
DA wins.

There's also a really great raid 1hand axe you can get - the bereavement. +5 battleaxe of +10 seeker.. And really not that hard to aquire, it drops quite often and generally people will offer it up. In my 50+ titan runs i've seen it dozens of times and been offered it many times for free even tho I got one early one easily. Much easier to get then the littany of the dead tome weapons (Deathnip, Sever, Serrulae)