Domain Age - Is it really that beneficial?

Hello, Long time lurker first time poster.


I am finally starting to get my act together.


Currently in the process of forming an lcc, obtaining resale tax id, and begin building ecommerce sites.


I have a question for you fine folks at the warrior forum.


Here is a little background.


I have a domain that I've owned for approx 3years with a couple backlinks. It is in the same niche that I am targeting with a brand-able name to boot.


I have used that domain when I was testing some affiliate marketing with amazon using the WP/ reviewazon / wprobot combo and it became a 3,000 page amazon site. It has been up for a couple years and made some sales. (mostly during the holiday season).


Then I kinda lost interest in the site.


Fast forward a little..


Panda hit... I read somewhere that it would be a good idea to remove "spammy" pages to save face. I felt the need to attempt to protect the site.


I removed pages that were not indexed and removed any page that looked "spammy".


While monitoring the site I noticed the pages slowly get removed from the index while the pages I didn't remove remained intact.


I was getting about 100 visitors a day and a random sale here and there.




Lost interest in the site again, I ended up just removing all the pages but left the site up. (can you blame me... it was basically an autoblog.)




Now the questions.


Is the site damaged beyond repair from the autoblog nonsense?


Do you think this domain is worth while using for the ecommerce site based on domain age and brand-ability? (remember it only has a few backlinks)


or


Would it be easier to start on a fresh domain?