I don't think it's a premeditated scam, just poor QC and policies at 'egg, that "maybe" are designed to work in their favor instead of being impartial, but yeah, more often than not when an 'egg board is open box, there's something funny about it.
I used to buy their open box all the time, can't recall all the different things that were wrong. Only one was DOA, maybe more but I don't recall them. Some where missing the rear I/O case plate, some had visible damage repair to traces with a blob of epoxy over the area, some capacitors knocked off but seemed to function fine still, some missing the rear heatsink mount plate, one had a CPU socket with a corner of the thermoplastic broken off (but still worked fine), some missing various unimportant accessories like the SATA (or going back further, PATA) cables. Many were just bare boards in whiteboxes, no accessories except the rear I/O case plate. IIRC it was mostly Asus boards that were like this.
I never got screwed like GN, and don't regret the open box I bought there, but haven't bought any in a good 10+ years, only new since then. The open box pricing became a lower % discount, to where the gamble wasn't worth it when you also consider they have little if any warranty past the return period.
I should also clarify that I never spent over $100 on an 'egg open box board, was still buying new for higher end builds the whole time. Typical example, last open box I can recall buying there was in 2010, an Asus M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 board, $58. I'd get boards like that when friends and family wanted an upgrade on the cheap. They usually had integrated video.
Even more than the above I stopped shopping at egg for items like that because I hated how cluttered their site became, more nonsense to navigate it including checking often for the open box deals (good deals on one-off open box don't last long), and weeding through all the 3rd party listings when 'egg decided they wanted to be a bazaar like amazon.
What I don't get is Steve/whoever being so cheap as to get the open box item, when it is so common for them to have some issue and they needed it ASAP for production/content use. They must not have bought as many open box as me to not realize that resolving missing parts/whatever can completely negate any benefit of paying for expedited shipping... or they were short on sleep and didn't notice it was open box.