Your beef rib steak is the ribeye, but it also has all the "Cap Meat" left on. They probably did not take that off. That would be your tougher/chewy pieces. They probably looked like thin strips above the actually ribeye muscle. These cuts are generally pulled off and used for marination or made into cutlets where they can be ternderized mechanically or through marination.
That is why it was probably cheaper, it had cheaper cuts left on the make it offset the higher price cuts and also less labor to get you that cut as well. The meat was probably not from your larger beef packers, but probably from your local 100 hd/day packers that do not get their cattle graded. They are just sold as is.
If you go to HEB and see their "value beef" in some stores. This is the same thing. It's all inspected, but not graded. Just sold as is with no grade to drive the price. I interned at HEB when they started rolling this out many years ago in San Antonio.
Those cattle are generally the cast offs from the usual feedlot group. They didn't make the size or they got hurt or sick and did not grow. Or they came from a small family feed yard. They could have also been just raised on pasture. Who knows really.
