This is my rather anecdotal take on all of this. I own three Sterns: LOTR, ACDC Premium and POTC. The first two were purchased NIB. The POTC was bought locally and home use only. To date, I have had very little problems with these games. I will grant that these are older Stern games and have not had a history of issues (playfields, boards) that seem to occur with newer Sterns
I have an NIB MMr with no problems.
I bought a WOZ ECLE and had to wait a few years to get it. It shipped with a number of problems that I have mentioned in previous postings. I have now discovered that I may have to shell out $800-$1200 to replace the 7.5 volt lighting. It sounds like this will be an eight to ten hour job.
Anyone want to guess which of the above machines I am going to sell?