That will be forever remembered for the fence 'incident' as you put it.
Regards painting, I always believe, and this is especially so with the Merckx, that unless its completly battered and has more metal showing than paint then its better with a bit of age showing. Though, this is just my opinion of course. Back home in Australia there is a guy in melbourne who does fantastic repaints of Merckx colour schemes and they are spot on. Most others I've seen, they have cut corners or used decals for the smaller colour changes. I seen one he did recently like Craigs 7/11 and each colour was layered up as per the original. Beautiful, time consuming and hence not cheap.
Up until the factory in Meisse closed about three or four years ago you could get a respray for less than a couple of hundred quid and decaled up with the original paint decal. The two painters in the factory must still be about somewhere.
Jamie