Fashions change, in the 50's it was quite acceptable to get your sax relacquered, now the fad seems to be to have the laquer taken off your sax...
The predjudice against relacquered saxes seems to stem from some of the over enthusiatic polishing of saxes sent for factory relacquers. It would appear that polishing all the scratches out, even the really deep ones, took prrecedence over paying attention to what damage the buffing wheel may have been doing to the instrument.
This led to relaquered instruments gaining a bad reputation and hence the antique collectors mentality of retaining the original lacquer, an attitude that still prevails. Some people get really obsessive, a guy in a sax shop told me that he had a customer in who was looking for a MkVI with the same lacquer wear as the one John Coltrane had...
Debates about whether the lacquer has any effect on the sound have been going on for a while and I doubt any clear conclusion will ever be reached. Some people like to remove the lacquer just because it looks nice, whether they'll still feel that way when their beloved instrument has gone all green remains to be seen..
now here's an anecdote about what not to do...
Several years ago I was travelling home from Liverpool after a gig the night before. Somewhat bleary and hungover I got on the train at Lime St and spotted a young lady with an alto sax case on the opposite side of the aisle. She was busy chatting to the bloke next to her, so I closed my eyes for a nap, dimly aware of their conversation... Somewhere around Warrington, I woke up and saw that she was showing off her instrument to the guy next to her and I heard him say "what're all those scratches?" I peered over to see a nice Yanagisawa alto with abrasion marks all over the bell and I heard her say "oh, I've been taking the lacquer off, it improves the sound" and I saw a piece of what looked like 400 grade wet and dry paper in her sax case... I nearly screamed, but resisted the temptation to say anything and carried on the rest of my journey in a state of shock...
Since I heard her say that she was going to Leeds, I can only assume that someone in Leeds is going round telling music students that sanding the lacquer off perfectly good instruments is a good idea and thus is causing the ruination of perfectly good instruments...
If you must get the lacquer removed from your sax, harsh abrasives are not the answer...
As you might guess, since that day I've not been in favour of delacquering