Featured Polishing question for souvenir spoon enthusiasts

Greetings all, I purchased 16 souvenir spoons recently, some are regular sized and some are demitasse sized. My question: I know we always talk on the forum about polishing silver, but I'm wondering if that's recommended for items like this. I've attached a photo to show two of them so you can see what I'm talking about. My question:

1. Polish a little?
2. Polish a lot?
3. Don't touch them?

These will likely get put up for sale in awhile, so curious to get other collectors perspective.

 

With these you want to use a Sunshine cloth to bring up the high spots but protect the three-dimensional "pictures" and words. Doing nothing will just make things worse over time.

If you don't have access to a Sunshine cloth, you can get a jewelry cloth - should have 2 different cloths - one for "cleaning off tarnish" and the other for buffing.

Mine is a "Connoisseurs" brand "Silver Jewelry Polishing Cloth." Got it at Bed Bath and Beyond, but I'm sure they are available in other stores.

 

Love the font on the Los Angeles one, reminds me of the Cheech and Chong Big Bambu cover

 

I concur.....while they all started life gleaming......if for sale....just a light touch up..!

 

Amazon's loaded with all types of polishing cloths....all prices too....

 

buy one at yer local hardware or jewelry store instead...................

 

Hi,
I am cheap, I make my own.
greg

 

I agree, just a polishing cloth. These are far nicer jsut highlighted.

 

I really appreciate the advice from everyone. I did some light polishing using a cloth. Here's what they all look like now. I didn't get these at "bottom dollar" pricing but it was worth a shot to me because they're pretty!

 

Nate, those are wonderful! I'm all for lightly polishing the detail on these spoons, but with mine, I always FULLY polished the plain parts - like the backs of the bowls, when not detailed...

I have a gazillion silver souvenir spoons, myself: a collection of (now antique) Washington, DC spoons - about 3 dozen or so - sadly, packed away right now with most of the rest of my silver.

Also have a LOT (dozens... perhaps a hundred) of special Christmas spoons, as well as a number of school spoons from the colleges I attended. Then there are the spoons from other countries - ONLY places I've been, plus a collection of Scandinavian guilloche enamel spoons and more.

On top of that, I have quite a few spoons engraved with my own relatives' names and/or initials. For a while there, I looked for pieces that were engraved "Lillian" or "Mary" or "Grace" or "Elsie", etc, just because I thought it was sort of cool! (Don't ask me - I'm weird!)

Anyway, souvenir spoons are a while different animal when it comes to collecting silver. As you said,

Yeah, and that makes them hard to send to the smelter for scrap, doesn't it???

There's just something about the design of these things that gets me every time!

 

little pieces of history.........they are lovely Mr N8 !!!