The brand of my first trumpet is lost to my memory. I think it had "American" in the name, but I'm not sure. It most likely came from the Montgomery Ward catalog as the "Good" of a "Good, Better, Best" choice. The rest I recall clearly.
It was chrome plated. Can't get shinier than that, can you? Nor hotter to the touch when playing outside in the sun, like at outdoor concerts and in parades. The manufacturer plated the slides without compensating for the thickness of the chrome, so they all were an interference fit. Nice. Do you know how much time and effort is involved in sandpapering hard chrome off the slides? I do. The bottom-sprung valves, on the other hand, weren't burdened by any plating whatsoever, so they did not resist wear, even with Holton valve oil. Remember the glass eye dropper bottles and the smell?
The case was just big enough to hold the trumpet, mouthpiece, a bottle of valve oil, and a cloth to wipe the horn down. I made a larger case to hold mutes and music, along with the trumpet. I lined it with green velvet, and I trimmed pieces from an old bed sheet to cover the outside, painting it tan, the same color as the original case. I did get compliments on it (not bad craftsmanship for a 13-year-old boy, if I do say so myself). There was just a sli-i-i-i-ight catch. I couldn't find wood thinner than 1/2 inch plywood to make the case out of. Lightweight it was not!
As difficult as it was to remove the plating from the slides so that they could actually slide, the chrome on the valve block wasted no time in starting to wear off, so I bought a leather protector to stop the wear. I later discovered that the leather protector absorbed and concentrated moisture and salt from perspiration from my hand to voraciously pit the metal underneath.
Better times were ahead a little over a year later, when I traded the remains of my first trumpet for a Selmer Signet Special cornet, an intermediate-level horn that served me well for the next three years and enabled me to play in tune without having to lip almost every note into pitch, like I had been doing. What a pleasure that was! Traded that in on my first Bach Stradivarius trumpet, but I'm getting away from the subject of this thread, am I not?