I'd be shocked if any of the players with the minis on the accounts don't have thousands of armbraces anyway.
Well, i have earned some limited minis the legit way back then, which i am still holding to this day, i don't have much armbraces or ectos or even plats besides those minis...
Really appreciating the middle finger from Devs, but not surprised because they did it before and they did it again in the first year of GW2. Recycling is the only thing they can do well i guess.
Lesson to be learned: don't store value in items in GW 1 & 2 because nothing has real value, except the money they can extract from you, that's why limited pets you paid with real money like Kuuna and Varesh are not on the list lol
If you've had them from "way back" then you clearly had no interest in selling them.
So apart from perceived value, you haven't lost anything, you still have the minis.