Indeed, some myths out there are that the clean ones were shite, so never played, and the battered ones were awesome, so played a lot.
Years back I had 2 x 1966 P Basses, both built around the same time and very close in serial number. One battered, one very near mint. Well... I prefered the mint one and it’s on my wall as we speak.
There’s great vintage basses, and awful vintage basses. The one in the OP could be either