Art wrote:

> Why spend years building something that will never have much
> monetary value, when you could invest in an authentic piece of
> mechanical music history and hear music played the way it was
> intended to be heard?

As much as I personally would love to have many orchestrions and other
mechanical music goodies, there is a couple of answers to this
question.  Firstly, authentic orchestrions are not available here in
Australia (I'm sure Bernt finds the same in South Africa) and I doubt
I could afford the travelling over there to pick one up and transport
back, (not yet anyway).

Secondly, building something is a project, a hobby, and I have never
even considered the monetary value of such an instrument. They are not
always built just for their monetary value, I'm not building it to sell
it.

There is also a large sense of achievement of making something.
Just my opinion for what its worth :)

Peter Coggins
(Blue Mtns. Australia)