Roll Collections - What to Do With Them and Why

I suppose one more rant will not do much damage.

Never, ever, for any reason, give one single thing to the Smithsonian
Institution.  They have so much stuff rotting away at Silver Hills and
other of their storage buildings that your "priceless gift" will be
dumped in there and never again seen, let alone protected.

I have personally seen their so called "Automotive expert" destroy the
transmission of a Miller 91 front drive race car of immense history,
just because of his total ignorance and ego.  What was it worth?
Oh, about $5M dollars, that's all.  They just do not care.

Universities or museums are almost guaranteed to just warehouse your
collections and will often just dump them or sell them off later.
And, access later to anyone is almost totally out of the question in
the future.  The Simonton Welte T-100 roll collection is a good
example of what happens to such things.

Those with piano roll or player organ roll collections, or historic
mechanical music literature, should definitely consider the Nethercutt
Collection in Sylmar, California, a well funded non-profit foundation
who have the time, money, and the will to properly preserve this type
of material.  Contact Skip Marketti at the library and discuss it with
him.  Consider this a tax write-off position when deciding what to do
with your collections.

Those that are so inclined should definitely consider _giving_ their
collections to a worthy, younger and enthusiastic member of AMICA or
someone like that, to start him or her on their way to continuing
this hobby.  You don't need the money, so just consider the gift
a continuation of preserving the material.  As to auction houses,
they only are after the commission.

See your material preserved and made use of, not just to be dumped
in some warehouse and be locked away forever, or until they decide to
just trash it for the space it takes up.

Jim Crank