That production level is in keeping with my reasoning in the estimate. However, the human tendency to "hold onto" things, even old brass instruments is pretty strong. And, getting rid of them into something other than an organized scrap drive (the usual explanation, one that I can see the logic behind but not the evidence of) would mean that they would fall into the "junk" category, stuff to be found at thrift shops and the like.
The place in Saint Louis where I "rented to buy" my bass sax back in the early 1970s had a barn on someone's property where they stored all of the myriad of big brass instruments. Literally, a whole barn full of the things, all sitting there moldering away. That's the sort of place I see old horns going to, rather than into a scrap drive.
By the 1990s, the barn and its contents had disappeared from the memory of anyone working there, which had changed hands in the meantime.
And, there was my high school, in a district that didn't have marching band (we did field the whole band at football games, and pep bands at basketball games; we just never marched), we still had oodles of old brass horns (no Fibreglas sousaphones, mind you), cluttering things up in the instrument room and in one of the practice rooms. They had four old Kohler bass clarinets, for that matter. A well off district, but they still never threw their old brass stuff away.
The place in Saint Louis where I "rented to buy" my bass sax back in the early 1970s had a barn on someone's property where they stored all of the myriad of big brass instruments. Literally, a whole barn full of the things, all sitting there moldering away. That's the sort of place I see old horns going to, rather than into a scrap drive.
By the 1990s, the barn and its contents had disappeared from the memory of anyone working there, which had changed hands in the meantime.
And, there was my high school, in a district that didn't have marching band (we did field the whole band at football games, and pep bands at basketball games; we just never marched), we still had oodles of old brass horns (no Fibreglas sousaphones, mind you), cluttering things up in the instrument room and in one of the practice rooms. They had four old Kohler bass clarinets, for that matter. A well off district, but they still never threw their old brass stuff away.