You are correct in your guess! People who have bought too much tea don't like to admit to themselves that their tea might go stale before they can drink it, so the idea of aged tea is very seductive. Adding fuel to this fire is that there is one type of tea, "dark tea", that does indeed get better with age, due to the specialized tea molds munching on it. This is not really true of normal tea.

There are ways to coax a bit more time out of tea, though, developed by tea vendors of the past who resented being forced to put their teas on sale. :) The traditional way to do this for oolongs is re-firing. Staleness happens much more quickly when the tea has absorbed enough environmental moisture to get above a certain level. So in exchange for sacrificing some of the original flavors to a roast flavor, the tea is re-fired to drive that moisture level back down again. This can be done again and again, although if it is done enough times, eventually all that will be left is roast flavor. For really fantastic teas, this can be worth it, since even after being re-fired a few times it will still taste amazing.