The "gold" is just decals and they have a clear coat (shellac) over it. Most of the vintage machines you see that have decal loss, it is on the bed where fabric rubbed through the clear coat off and then began to wear the decals. My purple repaint Featherweight got new decals and has a tough automotive clear coat over. I don't think I need to worry much about wearing through that.
I do use regular paste turtle wax on my original black 1950 Featherweight. It makes it nice and shiny and the fabric slides nicely over it. Other prople have their favorite products. I have read about one called TR-3 resin glaze that makes it very shinny and is very tough. I haven't tried that one yet.