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If the scale damage is something you're comfortable cleaning up, such as fine sand and polish, consider cleaning up yourself. Heck if you're gonna replace them anyway, can't hurt to try.

Likely...

In general, for me, when I sand, polish and/or rescale it is due to some aspect of damage.

Scales twisted, miss-sized, shattered, etc=rescale. Worm holes, scratches, broken tips may get smoothed...