Commercial/industrial-class VCRs, such as the AG-1980, were used in production environments where they ran several (or more) hours per day. Thus finding a good used one not in need of overhaul is a bit of a trick. But all VCRs contain parts that wear and require periodic maintenance, such as cylinder (head) replacement, lubrication, cleaning, and adjustment/alignment, and worn parts replacement. Home machines were generally used less, but still may have accumulated many hours depending on owner and age and will require maintenance at similar intervals.
As a point of reference, the service manual for the AG-1980 calls for servicing every 500 operating hours, upper cylinder replacement every 1000 hours, and significant overhaul every 2000 hours to keep it within specs.
Whether you use a good machine, or a throw-away $40 (new price at COSTCO 20 years ago) consumer VCR is your decision of course. Over time VCR parts wear and age, alignment drifts, belts and rubber hardens, and at some point the machine may start to eat tapes. And tapes age, may dry out, become brittle, and glues weaken. This puts your video tapes at increasing risk over time.
I would use a good machine for transfer/capture to digital format where quality counts, and then use a digitized (cleaned-up) copy on DVD or other media for general viewing. The $40 machine, if it still runs and plays back watchable video, can be use in the guest room to feed the old analog SD TV with old prerecorded tapes (and material that no longer needs to be digitized) when the in-laws visit
, if you have any left. (However, if the consumer machine meets your results expectations, feel free to use it.)