What Tondrin said.
The gem exchange already essentially does this.
To be a little more specific, Leatherworking, Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, Tailoring, and Huntsman…ing… are the ‘expensive’ to max professions. Right now, with some careful planning, you can expect to have each cost a little less than 10g to max, whilst buying ALL of your materials. (This also factors in what you recover from crafting).
Cooking, Artificing, and Jewelcrafting are the ‘cheap’ to max professions. Cooking in particular can be maxed for between 1 – 3g of net cost, depending on your access to karma and hearts, Jewelcrafting and Artificing from 2-4g.
When all is said and done, this will get you from level 1 to 80, expending about 3 hours worth of effort (if you follow a guide). A bit more if you want to plot your own course.
The total net cost will be approximately ~60g, even if you spend generously, and probably a good deal less if you a) have any of your own materials already, or b) have items such as crafting boosters.
This is about 3.5k gems. Even cheaper than you wanted it
thx, i started doing this.
leveled jewelcrafting 0-380 for around a gold (!)
and artificing 0-380 for less than 5g.
got my alt from 2 to 25. no boosters.not sure i wanna try cooking, cause i hear u gotta travel around getting karma ingredients with your main and thats annoying :P
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/11mq1z/cooking_guide_20_no_karma_ingredients_fast_and/
a cooking guide for around 4-5g that requires maybe 1k karma total (can use one karma potion for this) and all the items can be bought of the TP, no need to run around and find vendors in the open world
