Apparently it is worth $4k to be able to impersonate a 2010 miner for certain people. It is a uncommon appreciation, and that is why it would likely only be valuable to a narrow kind of a person (someone likely attempting to engage in some kind of fraud or deception).
Of course, if no early miner really wants to enable such a likely shady request, then the price may have to go up in order to satisfy a theory that most things have a price, it's just a matter of how much.
im still running my core wallet i created in 2011. main reason i still use it is its convenient for mining payouts. most early btc was transferred out to paper or trezors long ago. but i still keep a bit in it as a pocket change kind of hot wallet along with some on my phone in mycelium. so, its still in use for convenience mainly as its easier to fire up the core wallet then hook a trezor to it for the small stuff.
for lulz, just now exported the transactions to a csv file for excel, 1304 rows/transactions.
im sure it might be useful in the future if i ever cash out big time as i still have my pool account created in 2011 where a lot of my coins were mined to this wallet. so, proof they are legit mine from back in the day.
You are kind of making my point in another way. You have a logistical and ease of reference reason to continue to use a BTC flow through point that was always yours (namely your old-ass wallet address(es)).
If you sell me the private keys to that wallet, after you empty it, then I can act as if I was always the owner of such wallet - except in your case there would seem to be a whole hell-of a lot of extra baggage for me to have to explain in my attempt to impersonate you, because then, someday, I might also have to provide explanations for the various other transactions that came out of that wallet address(es), which I would not know such information as someone buying it from you and not knowing what all the god damned transactions were for.
Here, I would imagine that Craig, would prefer a much less utilized empty wallet(s) in order that he would have less that he would have to explain, if push were to come to shove.