The "value" is perceived, often by people who have no idea what they're doing (much like the examples in your USA Today article).
This is a lot like the "value" of various antiques, where antique dealers constantly buy and sell pieces amongst themselves. Did you hear the joke about the 3 antique dealers trapped on an island with a single King Louie VIII chair? They all managed to make a living...
My personal non-scientific experience is that users who are so internet-clueless are also e-commerce-phobic... They won't put their credit card and personal data "into the intarweb". So, the value to a retailer of this group of folks that can't master ANY search engine is probably much less than the cost of developing and promoting these sites based on such great domain names.
I think the Plenty of Fish model (lots of traffic, high priced sponsorship ads and affiliate links to more targeted or efficient sites) is a better bet for high value domain names, given that characteristic that you pointed out about the people unable to find a search engine. They might not know what they're doing, but you can be darn sure they click on ads!
Monetization techniques are improving (Auctomatic might be the next step?) but even just with AdSense they still bring in a lot of money. Factor in the minimal effort required to milk them for cash and increasing resale values and they become very attractive investments.