Suppose you are in the player piano supply business.  A good customer
needs a spoolbox for a player he is restoring and you have an old
player with the part.  You sell it to him as he is a good customer.
You got back the money you paid for the old player from the sale of
that one part.  Then you do it again for another customer, and so on
for fifty years of business.  That is why 90 percent of the pianos
at Player Piano Company are missing parts.  PPCo was in the parts
business and not in the restoration business.

Now you get a picture of why the pianos are worthless.  Even the
Art Apollo grand was made up of parts.  I sold him some parts for it
as well as a friend.

Now imagine you are an attorney who must sell this building full of
junk.  You do not want to put any [estate] funds into the building so
you put that obligation on the buyer.  That is where the situation
of the PPCo building stands currently.

Now what do you do?  The new owner will want to locate the elevator
in another part of the building but he cannot do anything until the
junk is out of the building.  That is the problem.  The new owner of
the building knows that the buyer of the pianos has to remove them,
so why should he pay to fix the building?

This cost estimate is based on volume:

The building is 5 stories with 38,000 square feet floor space.
The building volume is 380,000 cubic feet.
The contents are total 250,000 cubic feet.
  130 pianos at 60 cu. ft. each: 80,000 cu. ft.
  Contents that can be boxed:    85,000 cu. ft.
  Trash, junk & scrap:           85,000 cu. ft.
                        total:  250,000 cu. ft.

Estimated Expenses --

Rent dumpster 22'x7'x6' (924 cu. ft.), average cost $500 per load,
85 loads at $500/load = $42,500

Rent Ryder truck, 24 feet, capacity 1380 cu. ft., 60 truck loads; the
cost varies based on transportation cost, so $10,000 to $60,000 or more.
Pick a number, say, $30,000

Disposal fee of 100 junk pianos at $50 each = $5,000

Move 130 pianos from the building:
2 men, 16 pianos a day = 160 man-hours labor

Move contents: estimate 8 hrs per 100 sq. ft. -> 360 man-days
= 2,960 man-hours

Packing & loading, etc.: 2 men per truckload: 240 man-hours

Total labor: 3,360 man-hours x $8/hour = $26,880 for labor

Total estimated cash expense: $104,300

This does not take into consideration any boxes, other material,
expenses or anything towards an elevator.  Even if the costs were cut
in half, the cost involved makes no sense from a business perspective.

Then you have to sort through the stuff (only a very coarse sorting
would be possible on site) and then find place to store it all.
I would think the costs will exceed my guess.

I doubt that any instrument that has any "real" monetary value will
be lost.  The bulk of the player pianos have no monetary value and
will go to the dump, or at best be hauled off.

I looked at the web site for estimating elevator cost, which I found
interesting:  http://www.matche.com/EquipCost/Elevator.htm  The costs
given do not include installation.  I would be surprised if the new
owner would install anything other than a passenger elevator, which
means more time loading and unloading, and only one piano at a time.
In So. Calif. you can easily expect to pay $150k to $200k for a
no-frills single story elevator installed.

You can't save everything, so you have to pick and choose.  Hopefully,
you choose wisely.

Don Teach - Shreveport Music Co.
Shreveport, Louisiana

 [ During a visit in early 2000 Joyce Brite snapped photos
 [ at Player Piano Company which she has posted at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Exchange/pictures.htm  -- Robbie