I once saw a nice old pistol, heavily rusted but lightly pitted sitting ignored on a table at a busy gun show - no one was interested.
So I bought it, and after about 2 hours of polishing it got a hot bluing on my Coleman stove. It took on an especially nice blue color.
Not long after, I sold it to a dealer for 4x what I paid for it.
As he was paying me, the dealer lamented about "how some dummy had ruined a valuable collectible by refinishing it".
It had little buyer interest till you did your magic on it.
