I cede the point and totally agree that oily fingerprints will attract dirt more readily than virgin cymbal material. When he said "show their age", I did not think he was talking of dirt but more towards some light tarnishing. You got any thoughts as to why someone would store these cymbals in probably as good of storage as our nation's precious documents were stored in the 30's? I do not believe that airtight, structurally sound storage containers were all the rage back then. Heck, today all a guy would have to do is buy those clothing bags you hook a vacuum up to and shrink wrap the cymbal!! I cannot get over the point that someone would go to all that trouble for drum cymbals. Why? Hmmmmdrumhack Jumping2Burger Kinband2Stage Band2Sumo Dude
Actually, fingerprint oils also contain acids that cause damage to metals. That is why when building a car engine you DO NOT touch the bearings and other parts with bare fingers.
Now as to finding perfect specimans of anything. We can only guess but there are many scenarios. Again, if you compare to cars (I've been in the auto resto business so its an easy anology for me) There are times when we have found cars in near perfect showroom condition. Now they may not have been from the 30's but carsy are also harder to store in a perfect environment, yet cars have been uncovered that look like they rolled out of the showroom. And I'm not talking about restored cars. I am talking about a car that the owner bought, drove very little, then died for example. The owners wife still alive leaves the car in the garage, maybe not wanting to sell it or drive it, maybe not really even liking the old car but just lets it sit for many years for many possible reasons. Sentimentality. The crazy disorder that makes you want to not throw anything out. Lots of reasons. Then she dies. The kids go through everything and then decide to sell the junk in the garage. Maybe they do the same thing the wife does! Well whenever it gets discovered.....under a mile of dust is a near perfect 40/50/60 year old car. Its not often this happens and sometimes animals eat at the interior, things fall on it etc, but every once in a while they get lucky and no bad things happen to it. Miraculously it avoids the pitfalls of long storage. Lots of factors have to be in place such as a dry climate, relatively sealed environment, motor not seizing, gas not turning to varnish or not having much gas to begin with, luck. Change the fluids, basic small replacement of certain things and car is as good as new. I've seen things like this happen on more than one occasion. Of course most of the time there is usually a large issue but even still those finds are few and far between.
Cymbals are even more likely to see this happen to as they are small. Maybe somebody got some cymbals as a gift and didn't want to play drums. Stuck them in a bag and put them in the attic. Its unlikely they were saved like that on purpose but I can see it happening by mistake.
Who knows. But this stuff happens. Those are spectacular.