I have to say this is a very interesting thread
with lots of theories about values and recovery
but I would imagine that in the case of paper wallets
the are probably irretrievable but possibly in the future
as computing gets more and more powerful it may be possible
to recover lost coins.
Imagine the amount of times particularly in the early days
of
BTC when people had them stored and decided to
format or throw away hard-drives etc. thinking that
BTCwas just a fad and wasnt going anywhere . . .
My Dad always said "never throw anything away, you'll
never know when you might need it"