Prices may be declining, which is a good thing or a bad thing, depending
on your point of view.  But with the two eBay auctions listed in the
05.06.26 MMD, it's no surprise that no one is buying.

I mean, we have a Peerless with stained glass with a starting bid of
$14,950.00 and a coin-op Seeburg Model E for $9,995.00.  Now these are
truly beautiful machines, and I don't fault the seller for trying to get
a good price, but I can buy a very nice one-year old car or put a down
payment on a small house for those prices!

These machines may very well be worth the starting bids, but
realistically who has that kind of money?  Granted, these are antiques
and have been fully restored and are in working condition, but perhaps
prices have gone too high.  Maybe it is time for prices to go down a
bit.  Think about it.  Despite what a piano blue book might say, an
antique piano (or any antique for that matter) is really only worth what
someone is willing to pay for it.

I can certainly understand the frustration of someone who has invested
tens of thousands of dollars in an automatic instrument, either by
purchasing it already restored or by getting it restored, only to find
later that the  instrument is worth less than it was when unrestored.
But think about it this way: When you buy a car, you rarely get back
what you paid for it when you resell it.  People gripe about this a lot.
However, what people fail to look at it is the enjoyment and convenience
we get out of the vehicle.  Try going a couple weeks without a car, try
taking the bus.  There is real value in ownership.  If there weren't,
then no one would be buying cars.

Owning an automatic instrument is very much the same.  We get great
enjoyment from our machines, we like listening to them, we like
tinkering with them, we like showing them off to friends and to people
who have never seen such things.  Most of us buy these instruments not
for the investment potential but because we really like these machines.
If prices go down, then they go down; there's not much you can do about
that.  But remember why most of us got into this hobby in the first
place: we just really love these machines!

Ray Finch
Albuquerque, NM