Briefly taking aside individual instruments, you would hope that in general there is a level of consistency in QC across the more expensive basses in their ranges which means that there should be more confidence in buying them. There is of course no replacement for trying each individual instrument as someone will always say, “I got a dud from this expensive range...”
Anecdotally I had in my possession a MIM Fender jazz and a Sandberg MarloweDK jazz bass, however you buy it, be it new or second hand, the Sandberg is twice as expensive.
The Fender was a good bass, no question, had I not had Sandberg it would have been more than OK, but just all around, especially in wood quality and tone the more expensive one took it.