While I can sympathize with the OP's experience, I think selling the machine on principle was actually a bad move. He cut his nose off to spite his face and denied himself the enjoyment of owning a great machine.
One of the things I've learned while doing my first restoration is that there is no such thing as perfect in pinball. If you want to find perfect the closest you'll come is HEP...which is why people say it's better than NIB. But that'll cost you 7-10k extra to get that kind of quality. And I've never heard anybody complain about those prices.