Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
I wouldn't try to bring them to a shine. I would think "why?" When they look great just as they are.
Those are good-looking shoes. They do appear to have some degree of light shine in the original finish. Wearing them as-is or taking them to a higher shine is, of course, just personal preference.

There are good reasons to polish leather shoes, though. Just like waxing the paint on a car, it will protect the leather from the elements. In arid regions, it also helps keep the leather from drying out and cracking. The wax gets worked into stitching seams to keep them more waterproof. And when you scuff them, shoe polish helps restore colour to the scuffed areas. For the life of the shoe, polishing is what I would consider essential preventive maintenance. They just won't last as long without regularly maintaining the finish, and a polish is the standard for that purpose. It doesn't necessarily require a high shine; the amount of shine you get really depends on the method you use to apply the polish.

Grained leather isn't really conducive to building up thick layers of wax, so I do agree that they're not the kind of shoes that could (or should) be bulled to a mirror finish unless you flatten the grain like the military guys do. In which case, why bother with buying grained leather? The toes do have some natural flattening of the grain when they are stretched around the last, which is why I like to bull the toes only. The rest of the grained leather just gets enough polish and brushing to gleam a little and show off the texture. The natural dulling of the polish happens within a couple of days.