I cant imagine a lacquer causing it to be blue. DO you actuall have it, or only pictures? silver is capable of reflecting backa single wave length, as well as a few other metals when highly polished. THe martins are great playing horns, but they are totally inflexible, you are only going to get out of them what they give you, and you cant force them to do anything. There are a lot of martin fanatics out there, that will pay more for one in good condition that a regular one. if it was totally playable in mint condtion, I would say about 2200 dollars. Whatever you do, please dont turn it into a lamp, you could at least sell it to a repair technician for parts, so that he could keep other vintage horns playing.

Yes, i actually own it. It's painted blue, or something, but i can tell cuz in certain spots i can see drips where the paint/laquer/whatever...uh....dripped. It's in pretty bad shape. PLenty of broken/unusable springs on it, and some pads are crap. But unless i can get it working, i'll keep it in my possesion, and NOT sell it to a tech. The only tech that lives remotely close to me is 30 miles away, and then the rest are probably in the Twin Cities, and i don't feel like searching for some yet. Perhaps.

oh, for some reason I thought it was an alto - well a C melody will fetch 600 at best. It probably is not worht restoring, not for a C-melody.

I have a 1922 Conn New Wonder Series I C Melody parts horn; I say parts horn because it's missing the neck. It comes with a case and a mouthpiece, AND....IT PLAYS!!!. It will need some minor adjusting and maybe a pad or 2 changed. It was repadded in the 1960's. I played it as a kid, and the octave key on the neck broke. This is a common problem on the straight neck C Melodies because the octave key is so long and thin. Well, somehow the neck was seperated from the horn, and we've moved and I have do idea where the neck is! I bought another 1922 Conn New Wonder C Melody off Ebay a few months ago and just finished changing some pads and adjusting it. I haven't gotten all the bugs worked out of it yet, but it's comming along. I will sell you this parts horn for $100 if your interested, and I would just about be willing to bet that your neck would fit it. If you're interested, measure the neck on yours and I'll measure the neck on mine and we can compare sizes. Is yours a straight neck? Not sure how much difference it would make if the overall length of the neck is the same and it fits into the body of the horn.