...keep in mind that Huntercoin was entirely funded by the dev who spent years and never recouped costs...
Something seems not right. Taking into consideration the second part of the statement.
snailbrain paid for everything. Development costs, web hosting, etc. Nothing unusual there. But I don't think he ever managed to make back his costs. He also paid to maintain it over the years too. I'm not sure what you think isn't quite right.
...I suppose I should've been selling when HUC was $1 or $10 or whatever. It spiked pretty high.
Did Dev lose keys like the new Faketoshi?
Like domob mentioned above, Mikhail (thecoder) died very suddenly shortly after Huntercoin launched. It was a pretty big shock for everyone. He had the coins and private keys, so it was all lost. I'm sure there are some posts way back about it. It was pretty devastating.