"Restoration" vs "Preservation" vs "?"

[Dave S]

I've always wondered how different people make the decision whether to restore an electronic artifact or leave it in original condition.

Most of my stuff is not worthy of much debate, but I'm occasionally torn between the original / restored decision. On the one hand, I can easily imagine a hundred years from now how our best-intentioned restorations are going to be a source of dismay for collectors and historians. Yet a restored, working electronic artifact that looks and behaves like it did when it was new is a lot more enjoyable a thing for most people.

I have an Edison cylinder phonograph that has flaking varnish, partial loss of decal, worn pinstriping and green paint dots spattered on the lid. If ever there was a candidate for refinishing, this would be it. If I wanted a mint condition one, I could have bought one. I acquired this one inexpensively with defects that I intended to correct. (And I did replace the broken mainspring it came with.) Yet I look at the imperfectly reproduced Edison decals I bought and I worry about how different a restored pinstripe paint job might look and I keep trying to look at this with the eyes of a collector in 2114 (or in 3114!) That, plus of course my natural laziness and inertia has helped keep the Edison machine in original condition for the past 30 years. I think that might be a good thing, but I'm really not sure.

A friend of mine drives around a 1937 Plymouth in original (rusty with faded paint and frayed upholstery) condition. He has a ball with it.

I saw a TRK-5 with ALL original parts, including caps and tubes on display at an AWA Conference a number of years ago. The owner was adamant that he would not be "fixing" it; he was keeping it in original condition to serve as a reference for future generations. That was a new concept to me at the time, but I immediately saw the value of his decision.

This is usually a moot point since we're almost always dealing with artifacts that were manufactured by the thousands and there are already better examples in the museums than what many of us collectors are working on. And the dollar value of most of this stuff is relatively low. And the historical importance is minimal. (New experience for me, I didn't even cry when a collector friend recently bought an RCA 9-T-241 in rough condition and immediately removed the 10B and threw the rest of it away.)

Clearly, that's not the situation with the Andrea 1-F-5 I just got. It's an easy decision when one has an N.O.S. prewar television but perhaps not quite so obvious when it's a rare but beat-up, not one-of-a-kind piece with cracked veneer and rust on the chassis and perhaps a few missing parts. Its ugly right now to everyone but us hard-core TV collectors. It would look much better with the damage repaired. (Heck, they do that on million dollar old masters paintings!)

I'm glad to hear that there is a variety of viewpoints on this. I hope this discussion continues.

-- Dave Sica