A friend has a Card Whiz that was home use only. The wood even smells brand new.

How many games in total play meter?

Maybe it was never on location or someone really took great care of it. Very nice.
-Mike

I've seen it on several Gottliebs I have owned. Sometimes I get the feeling they didn't get played much.

I have a Solar City that looks like that inside, and it has more than 70,000 plays on the meter...many Gottliebs I've seen have excellent plating that somehow stays shiny and barely corrodes. It probably helps if it wasn't near an ocean or a smoky bar or an industrial city.
Our Jungle Queen is definitely an unrestored original, and it has very shiny plating. Maybe Gottlieb used some sort of clearcoat at the factory.
I always love the quality of the Gottlieb wiring harnesses. Those also survive sometimes in almost perfect condition. Some of those machines will probably last 200 years or more if we take good care of them and hand them down to the right people ...
Sometimes, I suspect we are running into older undocumented restorations that have passed from owner to owner. Maybe somebody stripped the playfield down and tumbled all the parts 10 or 20 years ago, and it's just starting to show tiny bits of corrosion now.

At 44K+ plays I would hazard a guess it is a well cared for operated game. I've owned many. I have a 30K play Quick Draw and a 30K play Abra Ca Dabra, both every bit as nice as your Grand Slam.

I did own a HUO Gottlieb Mustang for a month or so. It was like a new game from the factory.

My 72' Grand Slam has 85,000 plays on it...but it's in much rougher shape. Rebuilt the flippers and pops this weekend. Now I'm chasing down a score reset issue. Playfield also has the typical wear I see for this game. It's a cool little EM though. Paid $300 for it 13 years ago and I've never had the will to fix it up until recently.

Not very often but it does happen. Since I tend to buy games for restoration usually they don't look like that inside.

MikeO can tell you about the Atlantis he scored that looked like that inside the cab but the outside was the most awful case of nicotine stain and God only knows what else. It didn't smell at all on the inside and the outside didn't really smell but man it was a disaster. Almost orange.

I stripped it down and repainted it and it's beautiful now. Not only was it pristine inside, but it was without a doubt in the best condition of any cab I've ever worked on. Extremely minimal fill work and I don't thing I had to glue anything. It was amazing how the inside and the structure of the cab was so good when the paint was a wreck.