I've got a considerable number of Keystone recuts in my collection
and would gladly buy more.  The problem is that so few of the titles
in the recent Keystone catalog appeal to me.

Part of the reason I started selling recuts myself was the limited
catalog available and the fact that QRS had recently abandoned the
reproducing roll business.  If anyone has ever seen a perforating
operation (I've visited, QRS, Play-Rite and Keystone, by the way)
you'd know that it requires a fair amount of real estate, time and
labor to produce the product and keep the inventory.  The perforators
at each of these locations perforate very slowly and produce at least
10-15 copies per run.  It may be possible to do fewer, but the setup
and production time would eat up any profit you could realize from that
small a production run.

The reason I called my company "Patriot" was that my approach was
"Democratic".  The idea was the my customers were to "vote" on which
titles would be produced and we'd only produce those that were
"elected" from a financial viability standpoint.  If there was not
enough demand for a particular title, I would not place an order
with Play-Rite.  I used real "snail mail" and got a bulk mail permit.
It was really labor intensive!  I did this before there was widespread
Internet usage.  Doing something like this now would be infinitely
simpler!

The problem is that we're dealing with manufacturing technology that
is old, cantankerous and, most importantly, was designed to produce
many copies of a few titles in a day.  What's needed now is a
perforator that can whack out a few copies of many titles in a day.
"Mass Customization" is the buzzword manufacturing gurus use for this:
Dell Computer is a good example.  They don't make up inventory, they
build to order.

I suspect it simply doesn't pay to run these perforators anymore.
What's needed is a quicker, cheaper and lower volume approach to making
rolls and a decent mechanism for inventory control so that product does
not simply sit on the shelf.  Not only is the method of production
antique, the selling model and marketing of reproducing rolls has to
change.  Selling "mail-order" with pre-made inventory won't cut it
anymore (no pun intended).

In the meantime, I suggest an on-line marketplace for recuts.  Seeing
that we're all "wired" these days, it would seem to me that we could
all come together and decide on small number of titles we'd like
someone to produce whether it by Play-Rite, Keystone, Richard
Tonnesen, Whatever!  For example, I'm _dying_ to get a copy of the
Rhapsodie Hongroise #2 played by Cortot on Duo-Art.  This roll was
never released in the USA.  Somebody, somewhere has a copy of this
roll and any number of the people who have perforators could do the
job.  Problem is that I am only one person and they'll likely need to
make a minimum number of copies.  This is a rare roll and I'm sure
there are other people who might be interested in it, but why should
a recutter take the risk when profits are so low?

Bottom line is that we either need to come up with a better way to make
rolls or a better way to market them or both.   Problem is it's going
to take some time and money.  These are things most of us don't have a
lot of anymore.

Ed Chaban