Don Teach: I also have a similar dilemma.  I personally did a "cost is
no object" restoration on my Knabe and it is now 13 years old.  Offered
at $3500, playing okay-ish, there are no takers.  I also have around
1000 ragtime rolls, and a little investigation demonstrates that the
bottom has fallen out of the reproducing piano as well as the player
piano market.

From an economic standpoint I can justify doing the same thing and
splitting the things apart to sell, but the mechanical morality tells
me to not split up such a nice Ampico piano.  I haven't decided yet.

As a collector and rehabber of endangered birds, I have anguished for
years the difference between preserving a specific rare bird versus a
specific common bird and have come to the conclusion that preservation
(animate or inanimate) as a generality is almost a waste of time
because you are fighting human nature, but an individual's relationship
to a specific animal or piano is a completely different issue.

99.9% of everything that _ever_ existed is extinct, so saving that
piano for a non-existent person should not be an issue to you.

Don Winter