I love that I've landed some sweet weapons in the lunch box cards but when one comes up as a "rare" but it's rusty? WTF is that?

If gauss rifle is rare in lunchbox then rusty gauss rifle would make sense. Rusty pistol rare then that's just sad news.

The prefix of the weapon does not set the rariety of it. It is like a damage modifier. A Rusty XXXX will do less damage than an Enhanced XXXX.

I get that, but if it comes from a card as a special thing and it is blue shouldn't the quality at least be normal?

IF you found the sword excalibur it'd still be rare and valuable even with rust on it.

That's how I see it.

A rusty minigun still does a ton of damage.