I hoarded mine too, though only those I personally brewed/grinded for. I don't think you can really beat yourself up for over something like this, whether the eye system got changed or not was always going to be a binary set of circumstances, and whichever decision you made you could easily end up regretting depending on whether the vials continued to climb in value or were completely nerfed as we saw today.
(I'm not one to be all But the staff PROMISED!!!! in general, because as has been mentioned in many other places, we've seen other feature implementations that were sworn would never happen. That said, I do find the wording of the announcement thread a tad disingenuous about 'we promised no more scattersights and we're keeping that promise', especially this follow-up post: https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/ann/3004107/67#post_47417076
Obviously investors didn't buy up stacks of the things because they expected them to increase in value just by virtue of being retired. Making them obsolete by the implementation of new, simpler, cheaper versions is a good decision for the site (IMO) but it sucks for those specific users and it would have been a display of kindness to make some acknowledgement of that, rather than rules-lawyering about it.)