That was after machine polishing to remove all the swirls and scratches.
You could happily spend £500+ on gear, always something you want/need.

Best way to assess yours is clean it, and at night take it down the petrol station under the halogens, is a fucker for showing the defects.

This is the sort of thing, although this was a bad one, needed wet sanding:



Afterwards you'll end up with paint like this:



I think before anything you need to see how bad the paint is, and decide how much time/money/effort you want to spend on it, and what finish you require, or will settle for.

Here's a couple before and after pics, even relatively new cars are often swirled and scratched to fuck, if you catch them in the right light: