A small pin punch will remove primers.  A couple of fender washers taped together fender washers will clear a base with enough space for the primer to go.  If you don't have a pin punch, you can make a tool out of a blunted finishing nail.  Ultra fine steel wool, brasso, mothers mag, etc will all polish.

Cleaning brass is a question of elbow grease or money.
Vibratory cleaners are cheap as is corn cob media.

Stainless wire media will indeed clean them to nice shiny brass, but if you are only doing a couple dozen for non firing purposes, an electric drill with a dremal bit that holds cutoff disc makes polishing by hand quick an painless.

I actually have a dremel, and a billion heads for it. I even have cloth wheels and wire wheels for it and my drill.

Now cutoff discs? and just very, Very gently brush them with it?

Take the cut off disc off of it's mandrel and insert the mandrel into the case. Insert the screw thought the primers flash and tighter it down.  Now you can spin the case with the Dremel or electric drill while using the steel wool or rag with polishing compound. 

hi white wine vinegar will take off the tarnish, place  brass in vinegar  in a glass jar , tarnish will remove itself

You can remove tarnish with a mild acid.  However, if you aren't careful the acid can case it's own issues.  There aren'tank free lunch.

Not sure what city you are in but I am in South Jordan and I tumble using Stainless media.  If you want to bring the brass by I don't mind tumbling them at all.  Just need at least an hour for it to work is magic.

Most of the aluminum cases are Berdan primed (if you look down into the case, you'll see two off-center flash holes, instead of one in the center.  You can decap them, but it's a right pain to do so.  (As an experiment once upon a time, a buddy and I used transmission fluid and a close fitting piece of dowel rod to decap some aluminum cases.  Simply fill the case half full of fluid, stick the dowel down the case mouth, and smack it with a small dead blow hammer.   It worked, for given values of "worked", but was messy and time-consuming, and the primers were an odd size, anyway.  And did I mention it was really messy?)

So, unless you can use it for jewelry, picking up aluminum or steel cases is good exercise, and a nice bit of clean up at the range.