Every significant pipe organ is unique, and custom-built. You can modify and change it: e.g. add an extra rank, move the pipes around to make it fill the room b

Every significant pipe organ is unique, and custom-built. You can modify and change it: e.g. add an extra rank, move the pipes around to make it fill the room better and so on, so even if two organs started the same, pretty soon they are different. I did a handful of moves. It made sense when a church was moving to a new building, or some other "nearby" relationship, but for the most part it wasn't that much cheaper than buying one new. By the time you cushioned the pipes for transit and transported them somewhere else, you could have received an order from a factory for new pipes. The little tiny pipes are almost guaranteed to break or be deformed on a long move, and all the leather around the bellows will get torn. The organ in the parent article is big. That's going to be a large job just moving it, and there aren't that many buyers for organs that big. (Because it will be expensive to maintain.) So they are looking for a major cathedral, a university's great hall, a big city town hall or something like that. All of which are going to struggle just to fund the work assembling the organ, let alone paying to buy it. There was a requirement that the organ be kept together, which is why it is valueless. If they didn't mind someone buying it to fill up a spare parts supply, they could probably get some money for it.