Originally posted by Gary Symonds
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Gary,
cleaning is a personal matter. We all have a different taste, luckily, or we would all hunt the same girls and collectibles. I prefer my items untouched and if it's with patina, that's indeed gorgeous for me. I don't like dull and lifeless cleaned silver. I will not judge people who clean there stuff, everybody is free to do with his belongings what he wants
but
it is beyond my knowledge that people would even consider using a tarnish remover on a delicate award like swords. With all those good forgeries made in recent days, the devil is in the details. As you might know those silver dippers are made with extremely corrosive chemicals, the patina will fade in a second but you are also removing silver particles which will eventually result in a loss of detail. Repeating that procedure over the years will seriously decrease the shelf life of the award. Eventually muting the details, which will make it impossible to distinguish them from the ever improving fakes. That is no opinion, but a fact.
I read horror stories on WAF of users stating patina will kill silver eventually. No, it's not the patina that will kill the silver, it's the cleaning that will do the job. Whatever you do, patina will always come back... it's a fight you can't win. Hence i rest my case and appreciate my items the way they are. Silver can spent centuries in the ground and come out with all the details intact, it is stronger than most people think. A good example is the astonishing Berthouville treasure found in the Normandy region with Roman silver from the first century. The composition of first century silver might be a bit different than in WW2, but you get my point.
Thanks for all the feedback
However a mint, cased DKiG is my maximum reach. 
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