Create A New Domain Name - Or Pay For Established?

I'm in a little dilema. I used to own an online game site that was making me about $80 a month via adsense and other ad networks. I have great graphics for it, a great layout, and a decent amount of traffic each month. About a year ago I didnt renew it because i thought it didnt have time for it so instead of selling it i just left it alone. I had it for two years.
Now it's a year later. I want to get back into the industry and was looking at my old domain that has since been parked. I was thinking about making a new domain as I could probably think up a brandable domain or a keyword rich one and make it worth. Though I can also buy back my old domain for about $600. It has been over a year since it expired in my name and is still getting 500 unique visitor s a month through my old link exchange partners & traffic strategies i implemented and never got around to cancelling them all. I'd really like to get you're input on what do to in this situation. If I purchase it, I will have a 3 year old domain, my great graphics i had custom made (for real cheap), and mediocre backlinks and visitors already coming in. Or I could save $600 and create, an a new domain and start from scratch. No backlinks (I think there might be about 6k backlinks still linking to my old site), traffic and no graphics.

I appreciate the feedback. + rep, thanks will be given to suggestions.
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I would definitely go with the older domain. It has much better SEO standing as compared to a new domain.

If your domain still shows 6k backlinks, that means those links are going to stick and the search engines think they are relevant. If you get a new domain, it will take you almost 6 months to get good quality 6k links as your old domain. Your old domain is better in soo many ways, it has the traffic, the age, the trust factor, and the backlinks.

Just buy back your old domain and develop it back. Once the website is ready, do heavy social media marketing. Don't just rely on SEO, get the traffic from youtube, facebook, giveaway gifts to top scorers. Just get the website viral. If people really do like it, they will tell their friends and hang out at your website all the time. That is the goal!

Hope this helps

I'd lean very heavily toward getting back the old domain name. $600 isn't too bad a price for the types of stats and history you've listed.

Ask yourself what you could do for $600 (and include the time it would take you to do those things as a cost factor) to build something similar on a new domain name. And you can not regain things like age of the name, age and quality of backlinks, and other parts of its history.

Try and negotiate them down a bit, but if you're really serious about it and those stats are accurate, it's worth the amount originally listed.