from what people told me who’s had this happen, even with a lost account recovery key it is possible to recover the account, it’s just apple doesn’t advertise it.

Basically it’s the same account recovery process but they nuke the accounts cloud(which is likely a deal breaker) prior to handing the account over. The issue is you can’t start that from a self service portal, it has to be originated from apple support and getting them to actually do it can be a pain because they don’t like to for obvious reasons.

also i believe Not having a method of account recovery that allows you to retain goods that was exchanged for monetary value would be concidered fraud so I would expect they are forced to have some way of retaining purchases as long as you can clearly identify yourself as the buyer