Dear MMDs,  After giving you in another posting an account of the
auction in Chartres on Dec. 8th, I cannot restrain from telling you
about a very surprising phone call the auctioneer received during the
viewing before the auction:

  "Could you tell me, please, what is really broken or in very bad
  condition in your auction?  I am interested only in this, because
  I repair myself, so items in good condition do not interest me,
  and anyway they are too expensive."

I am afraid a quite large number of clients have the same way of
reasoning, when we look at the often exaggerated price fetched by many
items in bad condition (and so described in the catalogue), and the too
reasonable prices of items in good condition (and so described in the
catalogue) !

If you remember that some "restorations" contribute to the ruin of
definitively quite a large number of instruments, it is probable that
in the years to come there will appear on the market some very
improbable objects...

It is evident that we (the MMD, and the collector's associations)
have a duty to educate the newcomers to our hobby, to avoid such
destruction.  Good restorers are not many, but they do exist.  It is
better to wait a few months (or a few years sometimes) to get your
beloved musical box or organette correctly repaired, than to try
yourself and destroy it definitively.

And yet, I recognize that some instruments are in such a bad condition
that even the professional repairman is tempted to put them in the
dustbin.  Don't you think that those are items that should be preserved
too for future generations, to allow would-be amateur or professional
repairers to exercise their skills?

With best regards,

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.musicamecanica.org/