I've participated in these lists many times so I'll just list the most memorable ones:
Geforce 2 GTS 64mb
Geforce 4ti 4200 128mb
AMD 6950 2gb (current)
Those three cards stayed in my rig the longest. (2+ years)
Good idea.
The ones that I remember as most bad ass were:
Voodoo 3 3000
TNT2 Ultra ES
GeForce Ti4400
Radeon 6950
780ti