Export Cheat:
Go talk to the Gatewarden in Candlekeep, the castle you start in. The Gatewarden
asks you if you want to practice some mass combat, do it. Go down into the cellar
and a wizard will create some illusion bad guys and an illusion party. Go into
the illusion party inventory, and take all their good stuff....some plate mail,
shield +1, some wands...now export your character. If you tell the wizard to
teleport back outside, you'll lose the stuff - you have to export your
character. Now, start a new game, import the character and he will have all
the cool stuff. Do this as often as you like....you can sell the plate armor
for 300gp! With the small golden shield, make sure you identify it before you
sell it, if you sell it without identifying it you'll only get 1gp, if you identify
it and sell it you'll get about 500gp...
Thanks to Nathan Smith!