Hmm... Chris?
First of all; I do not think any vendor, motherboard, ram, graphics etc. buys ES from Intel, but request chips, but I a, not fully ajour on this one, but 99% certain though.. Especially since Intel reserves the right for alot of things, such as vendors may under no circumstances make a NDA with powerusers or media and ship ES cpu with motherboard prior to NDA is lifted from Intel. (which we all know happens quite often)
Second of, I am not suggesting binning in quantity of 100's, but rather 25. However, 25 000 Euro chips with the purpose of binning, is CPU mafia methods in my book, we might have different point of view on this, but, that is my opinion.