The things I paid/got paid for/in cash (say above $500) are so far:

* advance for a house, which is pretty much done cos it makes whole procedure easier for both sides

* that one time buyer of the land we were selling decided to pay in cash, but that was back when transaction costs were % of the value (that got changed to something more reasonable), so just taking a bag of money out of bank to give someone else that then went to bank and put it into their account was significantly cheaper than electronic transfer

I think it's also semi-common in buying cars, as then it's simple trasaction (here are your keys, here is your money) vs buyer maybe not being paid. But for mine I just paid via elixir transaction, it was cheap enough to be under daily limit.

As for sub-$500 still happen reasonably often but mostly old people.