A lot has been written lately in this august forum about the decline
in prices of automatic musical instruments.  Kin Vinen, in his post of
05.06.29, pretty much covered the spectrum of public interest versus
value.

I do not own a band organ but I do have a German busker organ which
I took to one of the events of San Antonio's annual fiesta in April.
That particular event attracted over 25,000 people.  I cranked the
organ for over five hours and the interest shown by the passers by was
intense, to say the least.

Having said that, I can tell you that no one expressed an interest in
buying the organ and its decorated cart.  I was fortunate in the fact
that no one asked me what kind of CD player I had inside the cabinet!

The location of the instrument plays a large part in its value, which
a number of posts have pointed out.  That is also quite true.  Here in
South Texas there are few "exotic" automatic musical instruments, i.e.,
any of the Seeburg "alphabet" pianos, Mortier, Bruder or Ruth organs
or Mills Violano Virtuosos.  What we do have is quite a number of good
old-fashioned player pianos.

San Antonio, Texas, is situated about 150 miles north of the border
between the United States and Mexico.  While pianos of any sort go
begging for buyers in South Texas, they are snapped up by dealers
across the border in Mexico.  A large number of those pianos going to
Mexico are player pianos which still have the player mechanisms intact.
The Mexicans pitch out the player mechanism, restore the pianos and
sell them at a profit.

An enterprising entrepreneur here buys any piano he can get his hands
on, warehouses them, and when he has thirty or so he hauls them to
a warehouse in Laredo, Texas, where he is paid cash for them.  They
ultimately end up deep in the interior of Mexico near Guadalajara.
Last week I helped him unload nine player pianos from his truck into
his storage area.  The only thing I was remotely interested in were
over 1,000 player rolls -- not that I have a place to store them and
selling them piecemeal on eBay would certainly be a royal pain.
Pitching them into a dumpster, however, would be far more painful.

When I started in business over forty years ago, a wise lady in the
antique business told me, "If someone asks you what something is worth,
tell them it is worth what they can get for it!"  I have lived by that
rule ever since.  I also never "make an offer" for something that I am
interested in buying.  I simply tell the seller to place a price on the
item and we will go from there.

Anyone who has something for sale has a monetary amount they want for
the item rattling around in their brain.  They want you to confirm
that amount with your offer.  If they persist in asking for an "offer"
I usually respond, "Ten dollars".  Their response varies from anger to
disbelief.

"It's worth _much_ more than that."

"How much more?"

Then you have "set the hook" and they have to come up with a dollar
amount.  It works almost every time.

I would say the same thing goes for any automatic musical instrument.
You can get for it what someone is willing to pay.  Finding the person
that wants to pay the amount you desire is the trick.

Ed Gaida
San Antonio, Texas, where I not only play paper, I perforate it!