Ref. Bovey Collection in Virginia & Nevada Cities, MT

*Sell some of the machines!  Good gracious!*

For the life of me this is one of the reasons I would actively and
aggressively work against anyone donating anything to a "museum."
Instruments get stuck in some place where they languish in misuse and
disrepair for decades.  They are out of the reach of those of us who are
passionate about their care.

If you would like the instruments that you have loved and cared for
over the years to be misused, misunderstood, abused, allowed to
deteriorate to something that resembles the YouTube videos of the Bovey
Collection in Virginia City and Nevada City, then please donate them to
some "museum."  However if you are interested in it's preservation,
allow it to pass into the hands of another caretaker.

That is what we _all_ are -- caretakers.  When we are gone there will
be another caretaker.  Some organizations and individuals are good
caretakers and some (museums with little money and a bad business plan)
are not.  I realize a museum has to generate money to pay the bills.
Would it not be better to sell some of the more common machines and use
the proceeds to supplement the restoration of the rest?  I just don't
get it.  Bad management.

The Stone Mountain, Georgia, Antique Car Museum has some machines.
Some work and some do not.  Sell something!  There is one Link machine
there I would buy tomorrow (if I could keep it from the wife!).  I even
offered to tune the piano, free of charge, so one could enjoy hearing
the piano and xylophone play in the same key.  Not interested.

It is understood that the management has no idea who I am and I probably
would have the same response to a stranger asking to tune my stuff.

This 39-years-old still dreams of having a small collection of mechanical
music instruments one day.  With the bad publicity of the Virginia and
Nevada City collection (as well as other bad public displays), maybe no
one will want the loudest, most obnoxious sounding thing in the state
and I can get it for next to nothing.  On second thought, donate to
museums, please!

Sam Harris
Greenville, North Carolina