And a ton of moves. It's not just the play count but the number of times the game has broken down toss in a vehicle and then reset up. That puts a lot of ware on a machine.

Believe it or not it's true (obviously you are correct about the shooter lane and dimpling, but other playfield ware can be due to exceedingly frequent breakdown and transportation which happens with games made to be taken to show after show and barcaid after barcaid).

Plastics can break when moving a game. Screws come out and GI gets disturbed putting more debris of various sorts on the playfield, increased debris increases playfield damage directly. Get an LED clogged in a scoop and watch how much faster the scoop gets chunks taken out of it when you start playing it. A game traveling around the country is also dumped into different tempartures and humidity levels every weak, consistent quick tenparture and moisture level changes can impact all kinds of things weakening parts of the playfield.

Absolutely can happen from that. Especially when it's not the owner setting up or breaking down the game...but rather somebody who just lugged the machine from Chicago to Dallas in a day and a half and is tired.

Vibrations from a bumpy trip cause all sorts of problems. You must not have seen the Silver Ball mania thread and what happened to that game in shipment from Florida last week. Transporting games can cause issues, these machines don't like being broken down and driven back and forth across the country every week for six months straight...