I don't know how many folks here also frequent reddit, but it's been eye-opening for me with regards to discussions of Star Wars Battlefront 2 (a video game, if you haven't heard of it). Setting aside all the controversy that's surrounded the game, there seems to be a very vocal, fairly large group of people who pretty much are
only interested in prequel-era stuff. They view Anakin as the "main character" of the entire Star Wars saga (or at least, Eps. I-VI), they don't really care about the OT or its heroes, and they think the Clone Wars was the Star Warsiest that Star Wars ever Star Warsed.
For me, this has been the clearest example of something that
Bryancd has discussed: Star Wars, for many people,
isn't the OT. They don't care about whether Han shot first, they may never have even
seen the OOT, and they've grown up in a world where Star Wars has
always had 6 films to it. Moreover, they grew up with regular episodes of The Clone Wars cartoon, with which they became far more connected than the prequel films themselves. Having watched a bit of the Clone Wars cartoon myself, I have to say that I can sort of understand the appeal. The show's a lot of fun and, to my way of thinking, is much more of what I'd wished the films had been. The films themselves are an afterthought by comparison with the show, at least in terms of defining story and characters. The end result is exactly what Bryan's been saying: as a property, ANH-ROTJ has a value that diminishes over time, and the OOT itself isn't really on the radar screen for a whole lot of people.
There are still plenty of older fans out there, and many who would buy an OOT even at a high price, but Star Wars has grown exponentially beyond the original three films, and is poised to grow even farther. That means that there's a gradually closing window of opportunity for Disney to really capitalize on the OT in a way that will have major impact on the market. Short of format changes for home video that inspire people to "upgrade" their copies of a given film, there may well be a kind of market saturation with the OT. Throughout the early 2000s and 2010s, you had two big home media releases, on DVD (later with a "laserdisc rip" copy of the OOT), and again on Blu-Ray. Those discs are still available today. Disney knows what their sales figures look like. So, unless they rerelease on 4K or 3D or whathaveyou....who's gonna buy 'em? If you already bought a copy of the blu-rays in 2012, or any time since then, are you gonna pony up for the OOT discs? Especially if you're one of these kids who thinks the whole story is about Anakin and he's the "main character"? Maybe, but....maybe not.
Side note: It's been really interesting seeing some of the fan reaction against the new trilogy, too. As much as you see people complaining here that it's just a rehash of ANH, Rey is a Mary Sue, blah blah blah, over there the complaint is much more about how shafted the Clone Wars era stuff has been, and how the market seems to be so heavily catering to the "OG" crowd. There's a real sense of bitterness that I pick up on from time to time, which actually reminds me a lot about how I felt in my misspent youth when the prequels were still relatively new properties, and it seemed like all of Star Wars had suddenly abandoned everything I enjoyed about it. Kinda makes me wonder if this process will be cyclical over time.