I did it that way when I set up my current tank, but it required making a special arrangement with (the now closed) Red Coral. Rather than having the rock ordered especially for me, I just asked to purchase an entire box worth from his next order, and the night it arrived I picked it up before it was unboxed. I can imagine that if you're ordering the rock just for that person it might be harder to arrange, but in that case he was ordering it anyway and if I had flaked off for some reason it still would have been sold.
I know not everyone can do that every time, but the beauty with dry rock is that you can cycle it perfectly fine without having anything to seed it with, the bacteria you need will proliferate eventually, so you can take your time tracking down the perfect pieces of live rock to 'seed' the critters and algaes you can't otherwise buy. In any case, I don't think I'd ever set up a tank without most of the rock being dry natural rock of some sort again.
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