I have always liked stainless. My SR1911 and SR9 are stainless. I wanted a matte finish but when I found the polished after looking for awhile, I bought it. I later got a SAR2000 in a matte finish and it was much cheaper than a CZ75B.
As a welder/fabricator in my previous life, stainless steel was
and is my
favorite material to work with, especally when it comes to restoring firearms, because unlike blued steel which requires much preparation work and bluing tanks to restore to it's original finish, stainless steel can be restored with the proper abrasives and glass bead media whether it was originally finished in this fashion (think AMT Hardballer,
etc.), or it had a brushed finish (
e.g., the sides of some slides & frames), or the entire firearm could simply be polished with care -
after removing any dents, scratches, scuffs, or holster wear.
Below is a S&W 5906 that I purchased off Gunbroker to restore, because it had plenty of obvious wear, dents, and scratches...
I very much enjoy such challenges:
Here was the opposite side of the frame, before some diligent file and abrasive work:
And
after the file, abrasive, and glass bead treatment...
And the muzzle end of that slide, which must have been used as a hammer, before:
...and
after the same treatment as the frame:
All work on the frame and slide completed:
...and reassembled, minus the sights (awaiting replacements):
The first stainless steel firearms were plagued with issues because the manufacturers didn't realize that they needed to use two different grades of stainless for components that were going to be recipricating against one another such as frame and slide, else doing so would produce galling. They eventually came to this realization, and along with better lubricants the stainless galling issues that plagued stainless firearms in their infancy has pretty much been eliminated.