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There's some wires getting crossed here. Sure, minor maintenance releases were delivered this way, but up until 10.7 the only way to upgrade to a new 10.x release (major) was the DVD purchased from Apple*. I have all my purchased boxed OS X releases from 10.0 through 10.6 still sitting on the shelf.

Major OS upgrades weren't free until the release of 10.9. 10.7 was first version you could buy as a download through the App Store.

* 10.1 was an odd release, in that re-sellers got given a limited amount of free upgrade DVDs to hand out, but did eventually retail for 20 bucks IIRC. Regardless, DVD was still the only option.