Here’s a proposal for Anet just to make the gathering tools skins a little more appealing and cleanly implemented.
Unlimited Gathering Tools – Plain (no skins)
Pick/Axe/Sickle – 800 gems each (soulbound on use)
Gathering Tool Skins
These would be limited time skins that would be applied to all characters on purchase and could be swapped on the fly in a menu just like Finishers. These skins would apply to even normal tools.
Current unlimited tools would be replaced with a plain unlimited tool, and the characters that own the tool will have the respective gathering tool skin unlocked on said character (not account wide).
Of course, an alternative suggestion would be to just add a cash shop consumable item to convert a Soulbound item to an Account Bound (Soulbind on Use) item.