I get it and respect your opinion. I in fact share your opinion on most titles. Williams made more than 13,000 Black Knights....not exactly a rare pin. There are plenty of nice survivors out there in homes and in the wild, so I see no sacrilege in taking a BK and making it look and play like new if that happens to be your vision for the pin.
Myself - I have a very understanding wife who tolerates my hobby. She has a few rules for it, tho, and one of them is that if I intend to keep a pin in our family rec room (currently maxed out with 8), that pin has to be smoke-free and not look like it's falling apart or even worn / rode hard and put to bed wet. That's why I stripped down my BK cabinet, fixed all the scratches and gouges damage, and re-stenciled it. Same for my faded and worn playfield with cupped inserts - between that redone cabinet and hardtop'd playfield, my BK looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. Ditto for the EBD and Mata Hari I've redone in a similar fashion over the last few years. Also Meteor, but that was a new CPR playfield, not a hardtop.
Happy wife, happy (pin) life.