I've had three games; a restored TAF, a TNA, and a BM66. The TAF had no dimples that I could see after a couple of thousand plays over three years. The TNA had some dimples, I don't own the machine anymore so I'm going off memory, but I think I really had to look to see them and they were few and far between. My BM66 started dimpling right away and it's very noticeable, hard not to notice actually. I've put 1500 games on it and so far no "evening out."
Honestly, the only reason this bothers me is that it hurts the resale value, I still think the game looks great overall. Thankfully, BM66 is my favorite of the three by far and I see myself keeping it for a long time so I think I'll get my money's worth out of the machine regardless. If I had not liked it and wanted to do a quick resale I think I would have had to take a few hundred less in resale which would have been a bummer.
Where did the whole evening out thing come from anyway -- was Steve Ritchie being sarcastic, trolling us? It seems like the most patently ridiculous theory I've ever heard. Do people really believe this?