You shouldn't equal old to dated when talking about FINAL FANTASY XIV and FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. Dated items come from dated recipes which have been revised and replaced by updated ones with better statistics matching (or supposed to match...) current gameplay. They are supossed to get banished at some point as Yoshi-P / devs have stated (and I'm not going to quote for truth - everyone should do their own homework).
On a side note, I'm not concerned about dated items; I just think that compensating players because of this is pretty weird at best.
