Step 5: Choose Equipment
When you create your D&D Adventurers League character for the current season, you obtain starting equipment and gold as determined by your class and background—you can’t roll for your starting wealth.
Trinkets. You begin play with a trinket of your choice from the table in Chapter 5 of the PHB, or you can roll randomly to determine your trinket.
*Selling Equipment. You can sell any mundane equipment that your character possesses using the normal rules in the PHB.
Purchasing Equipment. You can purchase any equipment found in the PHB with your starting gold.
Using the rule above from the 7.0 version of the adventurer's league player's guide, can I sell (for example) my light crossbow and use the money towards purchasing another item during character creation, or am I limited to the 10 gold I get from my character background (sailor)?
My aim is to go from Tempest Cleric, to Storm Sorceror instead of going to level 2 in cleric. I wish to procure an arcane focus, specifically an Orb, with the money gained from selling the light crossbow.
It would be a gift from his father (a former cultist from a long line of sorcerors), the training as a cleric and holy symbol gifts from his mother (a tempest cleric herself).
Best Answer
Yes, you can!
It is quite common in some Adventurers League circles for characters who can pick martial weapons to take a Hand Crossbow (75 GP), then immediately turn around and sell it for cash to buy other things.
Its not laid out or explained well, but the rules for buying and selling mundane equipment do not change between character creation and play. In fact, other than Potions of Healing and Wizards scribing into their spell book, at high-level play, the cash piles up because there's not much to spend it on.
However, you don't have to...
You'll get money as you adventure, and can just buy it then. There's no need to describe how you got the item, though you can.