I have my archive so nothing is really "lost", especially since I have a private account. (Well, as private as that has been, lately.)
I decided to go ahead and pay a service to do it, since the script I was using was getting rate limited and it was going to take me like 2 months to chip away at it.
I'm still keeping my account around for now, but it should be far less monetizable.
My first tweet was on September 14, 2008:
"I'm not asleep but I'm not awake right now either."
Which seems extremely on-brand for me.