The giving back auction mentioned before in no way hurt those of us with extremely rare items. Honestly it was at times the only way to know what your item was valued at which hasn't sold for 8 months.

I don't like the idea of free but definitely more use of older items as prizes would be a fun way to drum up activity. However as mikio states there's no point in making 90% of my inventory free when I can't equip them without putting my computer at risk.