I recently bought a 50g (new). A couple of days ago I discovered some chipping of the thin plastic platelets that appear to hold the contact-springs in place. A little scratching with my nails only made things worse it seemed (white blemish due to cracking of the plastic). Is this a normal thing or was it me who bought one of those units with a production flaw once again*? And can this be a source for problems in the future?

* my 15c LE came out of the box with a small dent in the keyboard plate, my 35S suffered from missing keystrokes every now and then (that is, before it ended up in a drawer), my 48G was exchanged for another unit (IR-malfunction) only months after purchase, my 15c was exchanged for another unit too because of a keyboard problem (got a replacement unit with a small dent in the case but in working order) and my 34c was send to HP for repair due to (probably) a bad contact That's 3 decades of quality-issues, all because of my refusal to use a non-RPN calc.

Bad karma? ;)

Not in general. When it comes to buying electronics perhaps (I also got an electric shock from my 1st PC (non-HP) after powering up when it came new out of the box (the metal back-plate turned out to be at quite a substantial voltage).

I can't increase the sample size by much, but my 2008-vintage 50g doesn't show any sign of the problem you describe.