The rolled toneholes are not the innovation. It's having the toneholes drawn from the body using Haynes' process. The Buescher, for instance, used the same process but didn't have rolled tone holes.
"New Wonder" would most likely be the model name, yes. Conn only used the "New Wonder" verbiage in a few of their catalogs and brochures. It was generally just called "16V".
"USQMC" stands for "United States Quartermaster Corps". You can read about dating the horn at
http://www.saxpics.com/conn/new_wonder1.htm#16v
Replating is probably a very expensive option for an instrument that size. If I remember correctly, silver replating for an alto saxophone was about $1000 US about a year ago.
Plating is usually done on a contract basis through the instrument repairman that you'd go to, however you could contact Anderson Silver Plating direct through
http://www.andersonsilverplating.com/contact_us.html. Remember, you're probably going to want any junk on the horn chemically stripped. Mechanical stripping will remove metal. This may be an additional charge. I'm not a repairman, so I couldn't tell you.
One would assume that a full repad and maintenance on a Sarrusophone would be somewhat more expensive than a contrabassoon pad job, as the pads would probably have to be custom cut. A contrabassoon pad job is $1200 US (
http://www.foxproducts.com/pdfs/BassoonRepairForm.pdf).
A sousaphone is a brasswind. A Sarrusophone is a double-reed instrument. I'm unsuprised that you didn't get a sound.
Quinn recently sold one of his Sarrusophones for $6K on eBay a few months ago (
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 300QQfviZ1). He sold a similar one a few months before that for $7.5K. Hey, he has a perfect condition, silver plated one, so he can afford to get rid of his bare-brass and/or lacquered ones. I'd say that a silver plated horn in perfect shape with the single reed mouthpiece and case would sell in excess of $10K.
...
FWIW, there were more than 200 Sarrusophones that have been produced by Conn. How do I know? The highest [16V] serial number I've seen is 278
.