Quick! Everyone hold your breath for that elusive Vulcan's Ring!
Y'know, back when the elemental rings first came out, I saw a guy standing at the Bastok AH with a Vulcan Ring. Now, I know no one has any reason to believe me on this, nor am I saying that they STILL exist....but for a moment, at least, they were possible.
Actually, it may well have been one of the "media characters" that SE used to (dunno if they still do) let the media (y'know, back when they actually pretended to promote the game) use when reviewing/testing the game within the general population. The only reason I recall it is because of how cool I thought it was; the elemental rings themselves were still pretty rare, so seeing a HQ freaked me out. It was about a year later that I heard that they didn't exist, and figured that for whatever reason, they were removed/excluded from the game.
I mean, if Sage Sundi can have a lvl 81 DRK (you know you want it, TG :biggrin

, I really wouldn't be surprised if they'd dressed up a character for the media with an unobtainable item.
As for the Card Conundrum, I subscribe to the believe that the non-quest related cards are included just to give a feeling of completion to the "deck", and for fun/trading. Look at most of the event items; only recently (or at least, since the Trick Staff II and Horror Head were first released) do a few of them have any real purpose, other than collecting for fun.