Ordinarily I would leave such a find as-is and still might if the cost is too high.

I'm looking bigger picture and hoping to use and appearance on American Restoration as a way to not only secure that publishing deal, but to help sell books given that they replay those shows constantly. They only respond to an email if they're interested in the item and I've already received two personal replies. So it looks promising it will get a bigger spotlight. For me, it is worth sacrificing patina for posterity and publicity.

It's also got some serious damage, some of it on the dangerous side with the rusted nails falling out, the splintered wood, and the jagged metal. At the time we transported it we had to separate the sign into 2 six-foot sections to get it into a truck so certainly some of the "value" of it's original condition was lost. We had no long trailer and given how scroungers are in Searchlight, it was important to get it out of the desert right away. I already lost one El Rey sign to the "I'll be back tomorrow. Keep an eye on it" plan and I wasn't going to let it happen again. Lots of people seem to "find" things out there at the same time and tend to steal things from private lots and such.