Good story. I bought a MSI FX5950U a while ago, paid a pretty price of ~$200 CAD shipped. While it's in transit, the seller sends me a message and includes this nugget of information:
"I honestly do not think the card had ever been used. It was a replacement for a cad cam machine that was left over around 13 years ago."
Nice, so I replied back thanking him for the message and the back story, I mention that I really enjoyed reading it. A few days later he adds more to the story.
"Was thinking about where the card came from and it was around 2005 when sirona came out with a new cad cam system but the video card wasn't powerful enough so we did field replacements with these cards. This one was left over."
I finally get the card and mamma mia! It's new indeed. It came in a high-end, silver bubble-pop bag (industrial client-like) with small bracket that gets screwed into the card's top right corner, used to secure the card within a non-standard case, not something that gets used with the ATX cases that we're accustomed to.
Freddy Pharkas says: Score! This one's actually worthy of the abused 'rare' moniker. Looks like that horseshoe I inserted years ago is finally paying off.