i've found it best to maximize your 'take' while pickpocketing by purchasing the item(s) you want then stealing the money back.
in the older patches, arrows were a gold mine, but that is no more.
there are only a couple items worth more than 50,000 gold, so steal the yit (golden) charms you'll use as well as the crystals you'll use ...but don't plan on selling these (you can trade, but it's laborious), as no merchant will have 30,000 (or more) in gold.
when you find things you'd like, purchase them, adding your (let's say) 20,000 gold to the merchants existing 10,000. make purchases that will give a merchant a gold total of up to 50,000 - then steal the money. i say 'up to' because gold stacks into 50,000 piles. if you were to buy 60,000 gold worth of items, you'd have to make two steals (1x50,000 and 1x10,000) to recover your cash.
this way you get the items you desire and add 7,000-20,000 additional to your gold total.
the arrow trick was taken from me when i had accumulated about 800,000 gold. i ended with 2,400,000 and more items than i could carry - all without collecting from act 3 onward - just using this method.
