If someone takes a hammer to it, it's not new old stock anymore. That new part is gone. It might be unused, but if someone bangs the crap out of something and then posts a picture so only the unbanged side shows, it's not new anymore. A few scratches, bumps, a little shelf wear is one thing, but dinged and dented to heck and gone doesn't apply anymore just because someone didn't use something. If it's been abused, whether that's in the course of intended use or not, it's not new. I had the same fight when I bought a "new old stock" care bear for a niece's Christmas present. Picture only showed the front, said NOS, seller had good ratings and claimed it was left over from her toy store that went out of business. It arrived all mildewy, the back was threadbare, and the tags were all wrinkled and torn. She finally admitted that the facility she'd stored them in had gotten flooded, but it still had those wrinkled torn up tags, so that meant it was NOS. I call bull****. New​ old stock means new, not unused but beat to ****.

Not DD's issue, but my pet peave with people just throwing the word NOS around. A week or so back there was someone wanting to know the value of his NOS frame. Not the bike that he'd built up from the frame, but the frame itself after he tore the pieces off. I suppose if he never rode that frame, it'd still be NOS technically, but, once he built it up, to me, that's no longer NOS. To me, it looked like he'd ridden it too. Just saw it was a keyword that raised the value of things so he threw it on there.