Dear MMD,  As usual I'm a bit behind in catching up with MMD; hence,
reading the first couple of postings towards this subject, I almost
once again jumped the gun to reply!  But instead I decided reading
through (most of) the rest of the thread.

Now, while I skip the tedious job of properly quoting everybody,
I have to agree with the idea of buying these machines off the
amusement parks, repair them, then lease/sell them back to the parks.

That the parks would like to re-scoop their original investment into
these instruments is as understandable as it is unreasonable.  Maybe
one could convince them to sell at face value of the original bill
(disregarding any inflation since).

Two thoughts have crossed my mind in this whole matter:

1) This type of "action" should be done headed by the groups or
organizations who one would usually associate with this type of aim,
say, COAA?  AMICA? ...?

2) Albeit we all do not approve much of this special way of "afterlife"
for such instruments; I ponder if any of the rich collectors could be
persuaded to gobble these up as additions.  It would be still better
than the current status of decay and/or eventual inevitable route to
the landfill...  At least there would be some chance of public access
to them.

Just my 2 cents.

Ingmar Krause
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

P.S.: Speaking of "driven by financial gain" -- for the right price
I could be persuaded to do the restoration of the one or other of
these instruments :-P