This inventory icon?

I remember this from like ... 4 years ago
can anyone tell me what this is

It's what was shown if the real icon couldn't be found.

It was for the Nicolas the traveler items, such as the keg of Ale, that Anet didnt get an Icon intill some weeks after the item was put to use..

it originally came from the alpha testing that was the icon for items atleast in factions alpha i didnt do any others

Yeah i seen it when i just got factions..
thanks

I remember that showing up for friends sometimes when I'd try to trade them items from a campaign they didn't have yet. "Wow, that's great, thanks Luny! But I don't really need a construction worker. You keep it." (That happened once when I tried to give sparklers to a friend without Factions not long after the first Canthan New Year event.)

It often seemed like they weren't allowed to see icons from campaigns they didn't have, but it could've been that they were simply running with an out-of-date gw.dat file, too.

It happened a bit after each new campaign's and EotN's release if memory serves.

actually it goes all the way back to the original betas. it is used as a temporary stand in icon for items that don't have a permanent icon for.

Yep, it's a stand-in for "icon doesn't exist yet" or "icon unavailable." The first was common during betas and preview events, the second is due to an out-of-date or mangled .dat.