GPU's hold their value much longer than Asic's -- still have reasonable value 24-36 months later
I never considered that, but it seems like you're right. People are still buying cards like the 7970 for mining (and general desktop use or gaming I suppose) and that's a 5 year old card. The only 5 year old ASIC I can think of is the Block Erupter USB which is practically worthless now, aside from a few collectors holding onto them.
Video cards went through a major period of stagnation during a large part of the AltCoin era - the 7970 vs the R9 280x was the same core GPU chip with slightly faster memory and a BIOS update, then the R9 380x repeated the concept vs the R9 280x, for example - the hashrate and efficiency however was almost identical between the "3 generations" because the core GPU was the SAME CHIP.
This happened because the applicable video cards were all built on the same process node (28nm) that was semiconductor state-of-the-art for several years (Intel's 22nm process turned out to be a VERY MINOR improvement at best over a good 28nm process, which is why almost nobody outside of Intel and RAM makers ever adopted it).
The only MAJOR change that happened during the 28nm generation was AMD's creation of HBM memory, and the resulting Fury line of cards.
Bitcoin mining hardware, on the other hand, has had short generations for a long time while they were catching up to the current "state of the semiconductor art" - the Antminer S5 and SP 20/30/31/etc generation was the FIRST Bitcoin miner generation built on the then-current process node, which is why it was the longest-lasting generation up to that point - they had to wait for the 14/16nm process to get mature enough and AVAILABLE enough to start designing miner chips on the new node.
The current generation of ASIC-based mining gear for Bitcoin (and now for LiteCoin/Scrypt coins as well) should have a 3-5 year run at the top, as the S9/T9/Bitfury/Avalon/etc. chips are at the "state of the art" - this doesn't mean there can't be SMALL improvements in the near future as TSMC and GlobalFounderies "tweek" their 14/16nm processes for small improvements, but it DOES mean the days of large rapid mining gear generations are OVER for SHA256 and Scrypt (X11 still has some room to go there, as I'm pretty sure the Baikal is on a 28nm process node while the other 2 X11 ASIC-based miner groups were on older nodes yet).