This has been on eBay for 5 days now, 2 days left. This very nice looking listing photo caught my eye, along with the price so I "watched" it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/391140154276
Well, 5 days later, it hasn't moved in price.
If you look at the only photo of the base, it shows a white sticker and corrosion around the neoprene feet. So, to me, this seems to be a very nice phone out of a refurb shop.
Does NOS accurately describe this phone?
Since it's in a box, that must make it new? Not really. Even if it has new plastics, it's not new, but rather "C" stock, a telephone company owned set that was sent back to WE for refurbishing.
It is clearly a referbished unit. It's no longer numbers matching, so the value is fair IMHO. It does have the larger line card cover, so it may be an older referb, or a painted shell. It hasn't been converted to modular yet, pointing to an older referb. That's a good phone to put to use.
I agree, refurb. I nice add to a collection - if one displays it with the box. Otherwise, it is nicer than others, but NOT a NOS set.
Refurbed? Yes. New? Depends on how you look at it.
It could be considered new because it's fresh out of the refurb shop, which intended to make 'new' again, and it hasn't been used since then.
If you think about it, a NIB two-tone 500 isn't new if you look at it from the perspective that a visit to the refurb shop means it isn't new. Those sets had housings that were either changed out right after assembly (no longer all-original-off-the-assembly-line) or had the housing swapped out in-the-field, which counts as an in-field change (probably wouldn't still be NIB by that point, but it could happen).
Short answer, no outside-the-box thinking: No, not new, but still in the box since the refurb visit. Nice phone, anyway!