...so when it comes to old altcoins only the ones that are the most solid and that have the most recognition have any chance of breaking their previous all time highs.
I second that as well, like Ethereum as an example, imo, it's pretty different from other coins considering how stable eth has been for the past couple of years, and thus as expected it broke it's former all time high during this Bitcoin bull run, having said that, most of these altcoins are pump and dump coins, so they basically just dump after their hype, and there's no way to expect them to break their all time high, even as investors await the altcoin bull run, it should be expected only from altcoins that have a good ecosystem and that is somewhat sustainable in the long run.
I think that another problem is with the name itself, an altcoin bull run, some people think that just because some some altcoins are going up that the coins they are holding will go up as well, and this is not the case, there are thousands of altcoins and while there are few decent ones released each year for the most part as you say we find nothing but pump and dump coins, people keep them thinking the day will come another altcoin bull run will appear and the price of their coins will go up but no one cares about such coins, they have failed already and only those that were good will rise in value once again.