That's what I think every time. I'm trying not to let it annoy me anymore, because it's such a worthless term anyway.
It's right under anything to do with the shooter lane in annoyance level. But hey, I get annoyed easy

EDIT: And it's always "hey it has 53 plays on the audits...and current ROMs..."

I don't think you are off base, like you said, unless they have the original purchase paperwork there really is no way to tell. The best you can do is carefully inspect the playfield, ball guides, and over all condition of a game to make a guess at how many plays it really has.

You forgot to add that you can also just go into settings and clear all the counters.

I don't really care the amount of plays. My acdc pro has around 5,000 games bought nib and never routed, but I take care of it and keep my games looking as good as I can. To me the condition is matters the most!

Once it gets to huo second owner is when the term means a little less to me. If I'm buying from the original buyer then the term is huge imo. I recently bought a machine that was claimed to only have 47 plays on it. In the back of my mind I was thinking yea right, but the price was good and I decided to check it out. The macHine turned out to be so nice, and being 12 years old it was hard to believe it wasn't true looking at it in person. How could a twelve year old machine only have 47 plays? Not sure but here it was sitting in front of me. When compared to my met pro and tfle I bought nib personally there was no denying the seller was telling the truth, or only stretching the truth by a little.

Here's my documented HUO shooter lanes and number of games played for peeps to compare.

Demolition man -433plays
Wizard of Oz -788-plays
AC/DC-1456-plays
Game of Thrones -237-plays
MMR-102-plays

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Purchased a HUO Stern Playboy a couple of years ago. Guy had the original box with his name on the side of it. Original batteries were still in it and had 196 plays. Game was perfect! He had approx. 70 games in his collection and this one was in the back corner along with a BBB. The BBB only had 500 plays. Lots of people have HUO games(including myself) with very low plays. My reason is I'm more of a collector than a player and when I do have time to be in my game room, I'm usually modding or working on them. Recently sold my AC/DC premium with only approx. 300 true number plays. Lots of reasons for lots of or lack of plays!

Sure, agreed. And when I sell my MET it won't have a ton of plays either, because of a lot of reasons. But the older the game is, the less believable, and the more people use the term, the less it means. Of course they are out there, and so are good deals I would never be able to get, and just weird situations all around. All it takes is to run into a REAL collector...Shit I certain(t)ly didn't know anyone in the early 90s that was buying games for their homes brand new. Of course they'll be tons of people on here that did, and were the ones buying them.

Same here. A majority of my pins have very little play on them. I enjoy them all, but at a very relaxed pace!

HUO implies low plays. If a game sat on route for ~1500 games...or in a basement...as long as it wasn't abused it's the same thing(other than light coin mech use). A low play machine screams low plays.

Paperwork proves nothing either...

HUO and number of plays means nothing without a description of condition. Condition is everything.

Example, these balls I took out of a HUO Revenge from Mars that came in a few weeks ago. The power driver board had issues too. From someone on Pinside.

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I've seen some rough HUO games. Not everyone knows how to take care of their pins.

Condition is absolutely the only thing that matters. Huo is a pointless statement and number of plays even less. I had an avle with 6k plays that had a perfect shooter lane too. At the end of the day if the game is mint, it doesn't matter if it was huo or on route, mint is mint.