With my restorations I started off with mechanical but as I got 4 done I shifted to cosmetics then fixing. I found myself feeling like I was doing double the work mechanically by working on it, breaking it down, then rebuilding and working on it again. My mindset now is, make it look how I want then fix what’s broke because I’ve yet to see a pin short of being smashed with a wrecking ball that cant be fixed. And even then you can just rebuild the cabinet, stencil it, find a PF, and so on. The only pin I think that’s documented that someone gave up on was that STTNG that poor dude pulled out of a fire.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/star-trek-tng-the-mother-of-all-restorations