Mellotronists

Mr. Mcintyre, and my Starlab friends across the pond whose name 
escapes me (please forgive a name-dyslexic old man) - I just got the 
toy of my dreams.  A friend of mine who is an inveterate garage-saler 
and auction visitor (come to think of it, the one who gave me the 
Stylophone recently) gave me another marvelous piece that he stumbled 
across.  I am now the exceptionally delighted owner of a pristine 
Spitz Junior Home Planetarium in absolutely perfect condition, with 
box, packing, and manuals intact.  I can't believe my luck!

For those of you not in the planetarium field(!) the Spitz Junior was 
manufactured from about 1954 until the middle 60's by the Harmonic 
Reed Corporation who you may remember for their reed-based but 
appearance-accurate musical toys - saxophones, trumpets, trombones, 
accordions, harmonicas - all things reed.  They obtained permission 
and the cooperation of Spitz, Inc., a respected manufacturer of 
professional planetarium projectors and designed a very high-quality 
educational toy for the home market to take advantage of the 
burgeoning interest in space and space exploration.  A photo and 
better description and history is available at 
http://www.pielock.com/nova.htm for those interested.