Triple the gold cost is a very, very steep price. Granted, you're paying for both (a) convenience and (b) assured supply, but even then, I find myself hesitant to use this thing.

according to kbscanner there is no other legitmate source of the boots in my game :(

oh well someone should add to the OP the command ~ "item old_boots"

There's a lot more gold in this game compared to previous versions of KB, so unless you are taking heavy losses every battle, using the Mysterious Parcel shouldn't lead to any gold issues.

True enough. I suppose I'm just being stingy, as I'm foregoing a few rune purchases whenever I use the parcel.

It seems that the old shoes can be included in random loot - just found a pair on some skeleton on Merlassar. Now I may get that parcel after all :)

where do you purchase runes for gold?

Iceland , from a penguin.