Minolta Maxxum 5000i expansion cards- anybody have them?

They're fashioned from pure unobtanium. Few were ever sold as you don't need those cards to do what they do...Except for a few exceptions which were incompatible with your camera anyway.

The Creative Expansion Card for close ups simply biased the programmed exposure to maximise depth of field. You can do the same by selecting the smallest available aperture which allows a fast enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake, or just use a tripod and remote release for slower shutter speeds.

The CEC for portraits "modifies the exposure to suit portraits" according to Minolta. I never noticed any difference at all, I suspect it did precisely the opposite to the close up card to bias towards wide apertures to throw backgrounds out of focus but that's what I'd always done anyway.

They do very rarely come up as old unsold stock but many shops throw them away during a clearout: low demand, plus the high likelihood of a customer finding the card no longer works and asking for a troublesome refund is the overriding factor.

The best source is to find cards which are already fitted to a camera which is being given away on Yahoo FreeCycle or which is being sold on an auction website. I got the Sports Action Card 2 last year for a friend in this way by buying a camera with it fitted. I then cleaned the camera and sold the body only for what I paid for the whole outfit and sold the lens separately at a profit. My friend got the card she wanted for free :-) The other advantage of doing it this way is that you definitely get a chance to check that the card still works: non functional ones produce an error code or a warning bleep IIRC.

I picked up some of these cards by shopping on Ebay. You'd be surprised how often these come up. I often trawl Ebay and have picked up many of these CEC's over the last year trying to find suitable cards for my Dynax 9xi. My problem is at the moment the camera does not seem to 'see' the card when it's inserted.