Baseball Trophy - UPDATED 6/4/17 To clean or not to clean

[CamaroCPA]

Genuinely curious: would someone explain why cleaning the tarnish off this trophy not be considered that cardinal sin of removing the patina from any other antique, thereby reducing its value?! (It's beautiful by the way!) Thanks!

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by CamaroCPA

Genuinely curious: would someone explain why cleaning the tarnish off this trophy not be considered that cardinal sin of removing the patina from any other antique, thereby reducing its value?! (It's beautiful by the way!) Thanks!

All you ever hear on Antiques Roadshow is "don't clean, don't clean, don't clean"....except when it comes to silver. I have no idea why. Come to think of it, I think the experts are OK with cleaning brass, too.

[ruth-gehrig]

My latest trophy project. This one was a bit more challenging in the sense that I had to approach this one completely differently. Instead of being able to gently clean this one with silver cleaner like I did the first one, this was more of a science experiment. Perhaps the silver plating was too thin on this trophy but I couldn't even "gentle clean" without losing plating and luster. My other approach, God Bless the internet , involved aluminum foil, baking soda, salt, and near boiling water
http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how...r-plated-items
The darkened areas that are still present in the after picture arent tarnish but rather missing silver plating.

[Leon]

Nicely done. Thanks for sharing.

[ruth-gehrig]

Thank you! I think these are fun because when they are so tarnished and dirty it's difficult to guess how much they will eventually clean up. Its pretty easy to do actually but if anyone is about to do one themselves and have any questions just hit me up.
Michael

[CarltonHendricks]

Originally Posted by ruth-gehrig

Thank you! I think these are fun because when they are so tarnished and dirty it's difficult to guess how much they will eventually clean up. Its pretty easy to do actually but if anyone is about to do one themselves and have any questions just hit me up.
Michael

What did you use to clean it?....BTW nice pick up...

[ruth-gehrig]

Thanks Carlton. Its basically a soak method that I followed from here http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how...r-plated-items because I was losing silver plating with my previous method of using light elbow grease. Now it did take several soaks with all new material but it did work. Combination of near boiling water, several tablespoons of baking soda and a pinch of salt with trophy being in contact with a good size piece of aluminium foil. The website makes note to say that the boiling water may break weak contact points such as solder areas so thats something to be cautious about.