Backlight in Inspiron, Back from the dead?

About three months ago I picked up my Inspiron 6000 and carried it to a different room. I opened it up and saw nothing, the backlight appeared to have died. I've been plugging it in to an old external monitor, and occasionally when I booted it up, the screen would flicker a bit, so I knew the light still had some life.

I wasn't very happy with the computer anyways, (I've used up almost 80% of my HD-more than I should, and it struggles with Photoshop) so I decided to go for a new machine rather than spend money fixing that one. I continued using the Dell through the end of the semester, when I could dedicate some time to researching different models.

Three days ago, I ordered a new machine. Then I spent some time looking for buyers of broken computers in my area. Today I found someone who would give me $175, and was in the process of arranging to drop the Dell off. I had just finished backing up the files I wanted to save, and was about to reformat my HD, when I looked away from my external monitor and saw, lo and behold, my laptop screen was glowing right at me. I've opened and closed the lid, changed the brightness, and rebooted twice. It appears to be fully functional again.

So A: Does anyone have an idea what the Hell was going on?
and B: Could this miraculous recovery have possibly been more poorly/better timed? Poorly overall, because I just bought a new computer, but better because I was about to kill it and send it for scrap, and now I can hopefully get a better price for it.

I'm just in shock. This was ridiculous.

 

Loose connection to the screen would be my guess.