There are many hundreds of old metal horses available on eBay on any given day...

and most sellers try their best to show what the item looks like in their photos.  However, if the seller shows you a filthy, dusty metal horse that has obviously been left in storage forever, don't panic...and certainly don't walk away, simply because the item is not sparkling clean!

These Gladys Brown Horse Head Bookends were sold on eBay recently...note the dust in the crevices and the lack of high polish?  No problem.  They still sold for about $75.00 in what is often referred to as "yard sale condition".  The seller did not remove the dust, and did not attempt to polish them up to improve the bidding.  Thank Heavens!  I would much rather bid on an uncleaned pair of bookends and gently clean off the dirt myself, than risk having a seller use metal polish or commercial cleaners, and possibly completely ruin the item before I could take proper care of it!

I have hundreds of metal horses on my shelves, and most them arrived in my post office with heavy dust and dirt on them.  Some are in good shape...others in very poor shape, but I dust them off gently, then use a soft, damp cloth to gently wipe away dirt, drying the metal instantly with a soft, dry cloth.  I don't try to polish them with anything, for fear of destroying what is left of their original patina and finish.  Dust doesn't hurt much.

The beautiful horse on the left below was once covered with a glowing coppery metal finish that someone most likely tried to spruce up with metal polish.  Although the horse is not completely ruined, and still has a lovely matte coppery color, the soft sheen of the fine copper finish is gone, and he is susceptible to moisture and oxidation damage. 
          

The picture to the right above is what he probably used to look like, before someone tried so hard to make him look nicer.

Cleaning these old vintage and antique pieces is best left to professionals.   The fine metal plating on these pieces is so thin and easily damaged, even a slight bend from pressure or stress can crack the finish and leave unsightly areas where the fine coating peels free of the pot metal base.The poor baby below was my prize GBE original like the one shown above...until my teen aged son dropped him on his hind legs and the pot metal snapped, and the fine copper coating stripped off the bent legs up to the hocks.  I cried when I found him that way.  But I didn't junk him.  I stuffed him into my lingerie drawer tucked between some silk undies for about 15 years, until I finally found a metal smith who specialized in repairs on these lovelies (thanks to Carolyn Martin)!  I shipped him off to California, hoping for the best.

After several weeks of waiting eagerly and crossing my fingers, he came home.   Thanks to James Walker, my baby  looks like new, (and these horses are HARD to repair after being broken!)

First, understand that the heavier pot metal horses will not hold a repair with super glue...no matter how good the bond is.  Any sort of stress or pressure will separate the bond, and you are in danger of losing the horse to even worse damage when it topples off the shelf.  Smaller, lighter metal horses can be super-glued, but there will always be a "glue line" where the cracked metal shows, and the item will not be as sturdy.  My repairman drills small holes into the metal of the broken legs, inserts a metal peg, and glues the horse carefully so that the pieces fit as closely as possible.  (Solder will not work well on some non-ferrous metals, like spelter or pot metal.)  Then he fills the cracks with metal filler and smooths and finishes.  Because it is virtually impossible to exactly duplicate the coppery metal finish with anything but re-plating (which is often astronomically expensive) he sets about carefully retouching the repaired area by matching the sheen and color of the old finish with specially blended metal paints that are then coated with a softly glowing sealant coat that duplicates the original vintage plating that protected the finish from oxidation.  Looking at the photo of the repaired horse above, it is nearly impossible to see the repair, and it is only visible looking closely with magnification.

Collector's Item vs. Curio

A seller I was communicating with on eBay tried to have a lovely Gladys Brown Edwards trotting cow horse with rider repaired and refinished cheaply, and the resulting product was, unfortunately, poorly done.  The repairman simply added posts inside the legs, but then refinished the entire lovely glowing coat with metal paints, changing the burnished, hand-rubbed copper to a reddish-gold, flat color that was nothing like the original finish.  The horse, even broken, was still worth about $50.00, taking into consideration the nearly $100.00 that would have to be paid for the repairs, SH back and forth, etc.  But the flat metallic paint job over the glowing copper surface basically made a lovely collectible into a curio.
To demonstrate what the repaired version looked like, check out the sprayed-on gold paint finish of the once-copper clock horse below, and you'll see what I mean. 

(The horse above is a tenth generation copy of a copy of the first GBE western horse statue, and was sitting on an old plastic or bakelite clock base.  The owner wanted to improve the looks because this one was likely oxidized, so he simply sanded and sprayed gold paint over the entire horse.)   Basically, the horse is now a curio, instead of a collectible.   It's okay to do this with a copy of a copy of a copy, but please don't do this to a wonderful old GBE or Estes Tarter or KO original...because you can easily take the collector's value totally away, and end up with a piece of metal that will make a nice conversation piece, but has basically been ruined.

Of course, I had no choice but to do this to one of my oldies...a Union Clock Horse from the 40's, missing the clock, standing on a sawed-off wood base. 

He was accidentally left in a cardboard box in the garage and the box got wet. He was in the moldy cardboard box  for a couple of years before I found him.  The surface had badly oxidized and he was all pitted and grey and green.  I had to scrape the moldy cardboard off him.  I tried gently rubbing him, figuring a blue-green patina was okay, but areas of the surface had been eaten down to the pot metal, and he looked like he had a combination of gangrene and leprosy.  So I got some copper metal leafing like you buy in craft stores, and I hand-rubbed it into the rough, pitted finish.  It did a good job of repairing the oxidation because it re-sealed the surface, but  the lovely copper sheen is gone, the surface is rough, and even though I antiqued it with darker copper mixed with brown before rubbing him with a soft cloth to remove the excess, it just isn't the same. You just cannot recreate the softly antiqued copper shadings that the old fine metal plating had.


Below is another wonderful old horse I have that I am going to actually send off to be replated. 
He is worth it.  This is the large Estes Tarter Roy Rogers school award trophy of Trigger.  Paying a couple hundred bucks to have him redone in silver and gold plate is well worth it.  But he will go to a professional...

So it's best to take your older metal horses to experts who have high respect for and knowledge of the original finishes, and try to match them as closely as possible.  It isn't cheap, obviously, but if the item is worth it, don't skimp on repair costs.  

So be careful and thoughtful when cleaning or repairing a vintage or antique metal piece like these horses...and you won't be disappointed. 

When in doubt...don't do it yourself.  Have it done by a pro.