Ooh yeah that is a good point too, the feeling of achieving a goal is awesome, and we wouldn't want to lose that.
But I think they should definitely re-release some of the old items, even if they degrade in value from it.

From a new person's perspective, they want 'impossible' items. If there's no one around to sell any of the old items, they're on an impossible quest, which can cause them to give up and quit the site - which we don't want.

So there has to be some in-between way of not making things free for everyone/so people can still quest/ but make the quests plausible.

Though if all the commons go free, that could cause another issue - the shops and commons are a way to get gold out of the system (if that makes sense). If those go free, that could cause crazy inflation, or other issues.

Ooh or maybe what if the commons do go free, and then the shops sell/for limited time/or even rotate Old CIs/EIs, that are priced based on the year they were originally released. Ie 2007 could range from 65k-75k, 2008 from 55k-65k, 2009 from 45-55 etc.