As I understand it these days copper is used if you have a lot of pitting. Then it gets repolished, then chrome.

I have a polishing guy here in the Twin Cities that is pretty good. But if you are polishing out pits in rusted stuff you are going to loose detail and no way around it. If you don't, it will look terrible and you will wonder what you spent the money on. I find that its often cheaper to find the part in good shape than to polish something that is too far gone. Another thing is that chrome guys (not polishers) tend to go crazy after a while (my guess is due to the chemicals) so often you get better results if the chrome shop is less than 2 years old, unless they have really good ventilation. I wish this was a joke but that's been my experience.

A lot of chrome done overseas is dodgy to say the least. Italian motorbikes are notorious for this. So far what I have seen of French chrome isn't that great either. The Brits do quite well. The point of this is that if you are trying to restore stuff like this, you stand a really good chance of over-restoring the part.

Just my opinion but I don't like to see stuff look like it belongs in a museum, but its hard to avoid if you use a chromer in the US- they will likely do a way better job than the original.