Man, this thread wasn’t nearly as fun to read as I was hoping.
Sorry for the OP. Sucky experience.
Personally, I still have PTSD from buying AVLE NIB. I literally took a hammer to that game to get it to work. A hammer. Since then, Stern has done absolutely nothing to engender enough confidence in me to but another one of their games new.
My NIB MMr was almost perfect out of the box. Had to put the Ethernet cable in the right port (weird) and the lockdown bar was a little loose, and sharp as shit, and put a tiny ding in one of the top rails, but otherwise has given me zero problems in 18 months.