For some media, this is absolutely the case. Particularly films that are slightly damaged, or seriously damaged, it's well worth holding onto the material in order to wait for better techniques to become available.
They laser cut the film apart, then used X-ray microtomography to scan the film and some very clever software to unwarp layers from the 3D data produced by the X-ray microtomography process. Not exactly something we could've done 5 years ago.
Case in point, this recent restoration of Morecambe and Wise by BBC R&D: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-fi...
They laser cut the film apart, then used X-ray microtomography to scan the film and some very clever software to unwarp layers from the 3D data produced by the X-ray microtomography process. Not exactly something we could've done 5 years ago.