Rudy Salazar vise on ebay

Back in the 80s Rudy Salazar gave me one of his beautiful miniature vises in exchange for gold plating one for him. The auction description says it's brass and it might be, but the seller might be mistaken and it could be the one I plated for him. Anyway, it's a nice little vise if anyone's interested.

Miniature engraving vise on ebay

Would you recommend these brass vises as a starter vise for hand push engraving on jewelry? Originally I was planning on picking up a GRS Microblock(the obvious choice for my budget) after falling in love with my GRS Benchmate system, but after seeing these brass vises I can't seem to get them off my mind. The quality looks very nice , but my main concern would be the practicality of it considering the fact that it is solid brass. I'm imagining that after being handled during use the brass would begin to oxidize on your hands while working- which is why I assume he would have wanted it gold plated. Anything is better than my "woodturners block set through a 4x4 with a $1.99 modified watch movement holder" set up I've been working with at the moment, however unfortunately I couldn't justify the brass vise if it would end up being more of a piece to appreciate rather than a tool for daily use.. The only other brass-looking vises I could find anywhere were these from I.Shor, https://www.ishor.com/engraving-blocks but again wasn't sure about the quality on these either compared to the Microblock or the Salazar block. I read your thread on the Pepe blocks and that was my main reason for concern seeing as the I.Shor block appears to be strikingly similar to the Pepe block...