Holy crapoly, that Eb key is in need of some professional help!  Take it to a shop that knows what they are doing bending brass and getting the right hardness at the end of the process.  Cold bending it could break it.  

The horn is a basic plain-Jane version Conn New Wonder.  It is definitely a lacquer finish, not gold plate.  The plated horns had fancier engraving.  I also suspect that the horn was originally bare brass and lacquered later.  I'm not too sure how significant the mismatch at the tenon joint is to the originality of the neck, since the fit and finish on a lot of the early Conns was on the crude side.  You might check to see if there are any traces of lacquer on the neck.  If there aren't any, the neck was probably replaced after the lacquer job.  But as long as it plays OK it's not something to worry about.  We're not talking about some top dollar collectible horn.

 

Does it have any other engravings, like patent numbers?  It could be a new wonder if it's '23 or '24.  It probably has the split bell keys (one on either side), and a nice fat sound?  They can be a little hard to identify, that far back.


Turtle



Btw, someone just put up on Craigslist here locally, an Conn alto from the 1890's.  It looked like it was in good, playable condition and they were only asking $200 ..... but I thought it probably wasn't low pitch, and so I passed on it.