I happened onto your web site in a roundabout way and am trying to find
if there are any mechanical music machine collections in the USA that
are open to the public.  I live in St. Louis, Missouri, and I remember
going to The Melody Museum downtown on Broadway in the late 1960s and
early '70s.

There was a charge to get in the museum and you were given a few
tokens to play the machines of your choosing.  Each machine sat in
the back of its own alcove so when played its music didn't compete with
others playing.  Each machine in the collection was coin/token operated
and some were more complicated involving more instruments than others.
It was fun to go with several people or when the museum was crowded so
you could hear the machines without using all your tokens and having
to use your own money.

I read an article in our local paper in the 1990s that stated an
individual from Sikeston, Missouri, bought the collection of machines
when the Melody Museum closed but I could never find out anything more.
Do you know of any such museums today?

Katherine Bauer
St. Louis, Missouri