Sand and Polish or Leave Character Marks?

[ScoutHikerDad]

Well, my summer is racing by, and my time is increasingly dominated by getting ready for my new Fall assignment as department chair and AP Language and Literature teacher, so it's getting harder to find shop and play time with all the reading and prep I'm having to do. But I thought I might try to sneak in one more. So I got in a lot of fixer-uppers from Oz/Onimaru from our BST, and am most immediately intrigued by this nice Boker "Our Own" Hollow Ground:



It came in yellow plastic scales with the metal bolsters, though the pin was just about gone. I just popped it right out. I'm debating whether to keep it OG or rescale it in some nice cocobolo or nice brown streaked horn from the current blanks I have.

Anyway, as you can see from the pics, it's in pretty good shape save for some surface tarnish and that damn devil's split black tarnish, which (for me anyways) always seems to polish up all smooth in the initial assessment "let's see what we've got" session with steel wool and Mother's. But then you start sanding, and deep pitting always lies beneath. It's a quarter hollow blade, and has that nice etch, so I'm thinking about just polishing the bejesus out of it, foregoing sanding, and then just leaving the character marks intact.

So what do the experts think? TIA for your thoughts. Aaron/SHD