Ok, so I bought it. I figure I can rehab it, take it to a couple shows, then sell it.
First step was to go in and trim out all the dead twigs on the inside of the canopy. That took several hours. Removed the aluminum wire. My hands kept brushing the top of the soil, do I swept off the excess soil. It completely filled a one quart zip lock bag! Now that it has level soil in the pot, it already looks better.
So, I started wiring. I know the first thing to do is clean the branches removing all the weak inside stuff and downward growing stuff, but this was ALL growing either straight up or straight down. You see, it was sheared all these years trying to keep it the same size. So, the branches all crowded together. And rather than growing sideto side, they grew up/down! So as I wired, I had to twist the branches to have them branch side to side. Which means that until I made the twist, it was difficult to figure out which side branches would be pointing down until after I made the twist.
And also, lots of the branches just exploded with many many branches from one spot. I had to thin considerably to get them down to just two branches.
Here's a picture of the excess soil, a bad tuft needing thinning, and my progress in wiring. For now, I'm just focusing on getting the wire on, and thinning as I go. Once all the wire is on, I'll come back and set branches and create individual pads.