My own view is that we collect music, not objects per se, so it wouldn't
bother me to open a previously unused music roll to play it.  I person-
ally have one unbroken new Ampico roll that I have kept intact as a
'collector's item', but I have another copy of the piece for playing.

But one can have the best of both worlds (I'll leave it to the philoso-
phers to decide if this is cheating).

The usual Ampico seal is a strip of paper that wraps around the roll,
with a hole in the strip where the hitching ring pokes through.  If you
pull the ring, the strip tears at the hole, and the seal strip falls
away.  But the strip is not fastened with glue, but rather with adhesive
wax, very like a 'Post-It' note, or the paper strips used for a laun-
dered shirt or in a motel room.  If you find the end, the strip can
usually be peeled off intact.

Then the strip itself can be kept as an artifact, or even (Perish the
thought!) reused.

By the way, it has occurred to me from the discussion about carousels,
that they go the same way as racetracks; clockwise in the British world,
and anticlockwise everywhere else.  I wonder how they go in other parts
of the commonwealth; I will have to ask my friends in India how it is
done there, where sporting tradition is usually very English.

Richard Vance

 [ Folks from the British Isles, visiting us here in the Colonies, express
 [ it like this:  "In the US you drive autos on the right.  In the UK
 [ we drive correctly."  ;)  -- Robbie