Standard BFL Customer Relationship Management.

Yeah. I waited until I saw what I considered to be sufficient proof of performance (both of the device and the business) from BFL before I sent them money.

Now there are lots of units in line ahead of me before I get the new toy to play with. 

Welcome out of newbie jail.
Now welcome to group waiting hell. 

But with that order date, and the rumors of the last week, I bet you have decent odds of getting yours by end of next week. (Pure conjecture, really.)

Can you give any rough number/quantity to that "stack of boards"?

"tens" leaves me as a less than happy camper.
(Not unhappy. Just less than happy.  )

Hundred or more leaves me with hope that they might quickly catch up with order backlog.

Potentially concerning. For me.

Either they have assembled and shipped all they could with the 'batch' of materials they received and must now wait for more materials to be received. (Concerning to me due to the quantity of units ahead of me in the wait list compared to the verified number of units shipped.)

Or, what I hope, Monday being a US holiday they only started getting new units shipped starting yesterday.

Have you also tried the "office at butterflylabs.com" address?

I seem to recall a statement on one of their posts that this is now their preferred email address for contacts.

1 ordered 5/14/2012.

Payment confirmed 5/16/2012.

"payment has been received in full and your BitForce SHA256 Single is secure. Your date of purchase is 05/16/2012"

I just did a cursory search and see 5830's going for about $200usd new.

What are they typically being sold at used?

I can't post there yet so I'll post here.
The topic is: "864 mh/s firmware release - Butterfly Labs"

This is somewhat concerning:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80497.msg893196#msg893196
"This happens if during the firmware upload something goes wrong ( power failure, device disconnect, etc).
Once this happens, the unit must be re-flashed."

There was no substantial follow-up to this.
Does it mean that:
1) Just "re-flash" again with the software locally,
or
2) Unit must be sent back to Butterfly for a 'factory re-flash'?

Plenty of info available at this very site.

"The best ones out there"

Depends on what you call "best". Seems to me the best ones out there cost over $15,000 USD.

Basically,
- Go with GPUs if you don't care about cost of electricity, heat, cubic meters or noise.

- Go with FPGAs if you want something which might still be able to mine at better than what the electricity costs over the long haul. Oh, and also to reduce those other three issues. (Solar powered is even possible if you want to really get operating cost stingy.)

FPGA caveat: Not yet a mature market / set of suppliers. (Flip side of this is that unit costs might increase after all the design, components procurement and manufacturing issues get shaken out.)

Kinda hated to make another post, since I rather enjoyed the label "Brand new".

Registered when I decided to buy a BFL Single so I could officially join the waiting throng.

Seems a good bet to me that I'll hit five posts and four hours before the BFL is delivered. 

I can live with these restrictions for the good of SPAM stomping.