Dent removal from vintage Trophy?

[vintagesportflips]

Hey guys,

I recently picked up this circa 1909 Reach figural trophy, and wanted to get some opinions. As you can see in the below photos, the ball portion has several decent sized dents. Has anyone had any experience or heard of anyone being able to remove these type of dents? I was thinking of bringing it to a very high end auto body shop near me and see if they had any ideas, but I think that may be a bad idea, plus they will probably just look at me like I'm nuts for bringing a trophy to them. I was also thinking of getting a jewelers opinion.
Carlton mentioned to me that he recalls hearing of a technique where a small hole is drilled, sand inserted, and somehow pressurized to remove the dents. Anyone ever hear of this?

thanks for any help you can provide
Keith