Do y'all happen to know of where I might find the golden quick ref
card for vi from back in the 4.4bsd days or did it even really
exist?
Matt Day pointed you to the source, but in a small but slightly assuming addition. Your comment made me check my archives. Indeed, while the version on imgur.com is not golden, it is close. The copies I have are printed on "sunflower yellow" card stock.
By the way, there was a firm called "Specialized Systems Consultants" of Seattle, Washington, that in the early 80s had a business printing and selling pocket reference cards and other SW and Services. They had a pretty good vi reference, which is ISBN 0-916151-19-0. It was printed on white card stock with black and blue letters for highlights and boxes around some of the text.
Also, while looking for the vi cards, I turned up two wonderful artifacts that I'll try to get scanned and added to TUHS at some point. When you purchased V7 from AT&T, you got one copy of the printed docs and a small "purple/red" 9"x3.5" flip-binding reference card that Lorinda Cherry compiled. Also, when DEC released V7M-11, they printed a small flip-binding 8"x4" reference called the "programmers guide" [AA-X7978-1C]—which is similar but different.