> So, a proxy? Onion routing doesn't really play a role for this use case.

The onion routing obscured our identity from the "proxy" exit nodes.

Separately, Tor was also a convenient way to get a lot of arbitrary country-specific "proxies", without dealing with the sometimes sketchy businesses that are behind residential IP proxies.

(Counterfeiting/graymarket operations can be organized crime. I'd rather just fire up Tor, and trust math a little, than to try to vet the legitimacy and intentions of a residential IP broker.)