It depends...
It depends on what you want the domain for.
Age is useful and if the page has some archived records. If its over seven years with archived records and you build up a site with the same theme/idea it should help you in the search engines.
Also some people just buy aged domains to resell but thats risky. Very limited market if you are buying some weird names.
Lots of people use Freshdrop to find names with PR that they can use for various reasons. Thats a whole different issues about using the PR.
Backlinks are good if you are looking for traffic but again you must check out the backlinks. I've seen sites that have 1,000 backlinks but they are all from the same forum so they are pretty much useless.
I hope that info helps but I'd advice you to try out some ideas with the $5 closeouts (plus the reg fee) before you try things on the bigger listing. You can find some deals on the $5 list which you can flip for a small profit. Try it with one or two domains first to see if your ideas work.
