The coating was always the same metallic color. At no point was the inside matte or any other color. The only noticeable change was the peeling. Sanding it down helped, although it's impossible to get it 100% clean (at least, I'm not willing to spend that much time doing it).
I scrubbed the inside with a paint scrapper and sand paper (two more pics at
http://pbckt.com/sx.7Ni), which stopped most of the flaking. Now the machine is back together and accessing a gig worth of software from my Beige G3 desktop :beige: . I had always assumed the yellowing was bad and the retrobright had a minimal effect, but looking at it again... is it possible I have a beige Plus? I had assumed the beige Pluses looked more like 512ks from the front (only the Apple logo). Mine looks like a typical Plus and the back reads "Macintosh Plus, 1 MB." I ran the serial number through the early mac decoder (
http://macfaq.org/serial.html) and got this:
Your Macintosh Plus (M0001A) was the 5032d manufactured during the 14th week of 1987 in Fremont, CA.
I have read that the switch to Platinum was sometime in 1987 but I don't know when. Take a look at the Low End Mac page (
http://lowendmac.com/compact/macintosh-plus.html). The present color of my machine is closer to the second machine (on the left) than the first machine.
If in fact I do have a beige Plus, then I would say the retrobright was more of a success than I gave it credit for (apart from the metallic peeling).
