Empress's Minions drop Lv.140 equips.

Now let's take a look at option (b), selling it:
These equips will be brand-spanking new, and there likely will be no others on the market.
Rarity alone will easily make it worth 2bil+.

In my experience with timeless, being in the first group to bring any timeless anything into Khaini (other than that stupid box drop event during evan release), even claws weren't going for 2b+. If it's a good level 140 weapon i'll put it at a solid 1.3b. Less used weapons and normal gear I can't see reaching above 1b.

That way is much slow and pointless in my opinion. You go on the runs so you don't have to buy the item for. czak for example I know some people who would charge like 300m to loot a helm and they would sell helms for like 500 or 600 they bring like 10-15 people the splits are only like 27m. You would be waiting weeks to get the money from splits to pay for the damn helm. When you could have run twice everyday(or ever other day) and gotten everyone who wanted a helm in your run within the week. It's not a waste of time for the empress either last time I checked you don't bring every single class to this for example a wand might drop all your mages use staffs. Go ahead and sell it for splits in that same run a sword might drop give it to someone who needed a sword.

Because just giving an item to a runner is, in fact, wasteful. The purpose, as I understand boss runs, is to mutually make money and boost up the group of runners. Within those two goals, which interlap, comes many other benefits that I won't bother addressing. Just giving a sword to a runner, how do you decide which runner? What if that runner booms it on a 90% pot scroll? Do they get another? How is that fair to the other runners? What about buying it for a discount after they've shown their dedication to the runs? That's why we do it our way. It also gives the market time to react to the new items so we can decide how much to sell to runners.

Keep in mind, runs aren't free. Especially as the group is just figuring out how to kill her. KMS PB is different from GMS PB. There's a learning curve. The probability of KMS CE being different from GMS CE is noticeable, and worth taking into consideration.