I think the better question is we should be looking at here is;
Are these accounts in question capable of getting certain amounts in money, projects or even other valuables that would be worth as much as it was bought for, short term or long term?
Can they be used to get loans that would come close to that amount or bought amount?
In all likelihood the new owner would want the account to engage in some sort of massive scam;
No doubt, as I can't see anybody trying to buy an old account simply to enter it into a signature campaign and then wait until the buyer earns enough to make the purchase worth it--idiots who buy accounts here generally aren't that forward-looking to begin with, so there would have to be some kind of scheme they had in mind to scam $10k+.
Now note that, every bought account is an investment unto the buyer and definitely, would hope to make some profit from that investment. No one wants your account and reputation if it’s going to account for nothing. Managers have been given more money than $10k for an escrow and they are still here, handling campaigns. Perhaps you can check some of the managers resume in their service threads and the escrowed amount for a single project at times is half of that.
Accounts that holds half of that holds half of that for a project will sure have some more on other projects which beats that price.
As to what sort of account would be worth that amount of dough....it'd have to be an account that was very trusted, Legendary, and even then $10,000 is a lot for a single bitcointalk account, especially with all the risk involved in getting caught. Hopefully none of the OGs here would consider selling their accounts to a potential scammer (or anyone else for that matter). Bad things happen when accounts change hands.
Though it’s a lot for users, it’s nothing to some others and in this case, clearly not worth it. The measure of an account is what you give it as a reputable user. It means even more when you respectfully detach yourself from the forum than sell your account and come back here as a guest to see what trash have been done to your name by a new owner and how everything you worked to build in years have been dragged to the mud. It sure would hurt.