Hi MMDers,

Over the years, I've come across a significant number of piano rolls
that have had the roll number blacked over, both on the box and on the
roll inside.  It looks as if it was done with a wide-tipped felt pen.
It's pretty good ink too; I haven't yet found a solvent that will get
it off reliably.

My question is: Why would anybody mutilate a label in this way?

My suspicion is that it was done in the shop from which the roll was
originally obtained.

At first I thought this was some scheme to prevent the customer
reordering that roll by number from some other vendor, but that doesn't
make sense.  Why would they want another copy and why couldn't they
order it by title anyway?

So now I'm thinking that maybe these rolls were being sold off at below
list price and that blacking out the roll number somehow made that OK.
Does anybody have any other opinion, or better, know what the real
reason was?

John Phillips in Hobart,  Tasmania.