Definitely congrats on your find. I consider myself overall a realist, so my advice here is going to go contrary to a lot of what you're reading.
First, I've learned that you should be wary overall when reading here. Given some users' ideas, you need a rack full of gear to properly listen to music. I've been pretty impressed with driving headphones. Test them out of some sources, and see how they are powered. My uDAC has not been unable to power headphone yet, and using my Sparrow amp doesn't provide quite the improvement that I expected. Really, if you are at 3/4 volume on whatever device, and the headphones are too loud to listen to, then you have an over-capable amp. The biggest indication that your ipod wouldn't be able to drive them would be that even at max volume, they sound too quiet. Otherwise, I bet they are being driven decently. The only thing is that your ipod will run its battery down more quickly.
Second, if you get any $1,500 offers for the headphones, if I were in your shoes, I'd sell them. Putting everything in perspective, if you are needing an AC-powered amp, DAC, etc. then you lose the best part about headphones: their portability (not that I'd let something this expensive out the front door anyway). For $1,500 you could get a decent Denon/Yamaha/Pioneer Elite receiver, some Kef speakers, and a Klipsch Reference 10" sub that will, sound-quality wise, blow away any headphone setup, for any price. Heck, for $1,500 you can step up to something like Ultrasone's top end Edition headphones, or Sony's new flagship, and have money left over to go on a bunch of dates. You can get yourself a nice pair of $60-70 workout headphones where the sound quality doesn't matter as much as when you're in a producing studio, and then if you want a nice pair of headphones for walking around, you can get yourself something as highly regarded as the 32 ohm Beyerdynamic dt880, or the sennheiser hd 25-1 ii.