How can a guitar get reliced this much?

This is Mr Rory Gallagher’s strat, as some of you might guess. Even if you play a single guitar for fifty years and not care about it at all, I don’t think even it would relic this much. Did Rory actively did stuff to make it look more relic? What do you think?

Also, what do you think makes this guitar better than any other pristine guitar to Rory? Is it purely sentimental? It looks beautiful but also old, with all the rust on the pups etc. Can this be superior to a fairly new strat? Or will it be worse?