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Old 5th May 2020, 2:56 pm   #21
Lucien Nunes
Rest in Peace
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 2,508
Default Re: What to do with my collection

I feel that:
Quote:
Don't give them to a museum because in a few years they will all be skipped or ebayed
Is somewhat disingenuous towards the many conscientious people in museums who spend their working lives safeguarding their collections and working within stringent policies of what they can and cannot do. In an accredited museum, indeed any properly-run museum, varying the disposal policy requires quite compelling reasons; it is not done haphazardly without investigating the alternatives. Non-accessioned items do get disposed of, but these are often items that have been forced on the museum against their wishes and in a way incompatible with their collecting policy.

Items have different values to different people, and it is not always valid to convert everything into a monetary value. One of my sub-collections can never be complete because someone broke up the known final example of a particular model, claiming it was of no value as-is. I never revealed what I would have offered for it, had I known before it was scrapped. On the other hand, when you are spending 2/3 of your income on premises and bills to get the project going, the last thing you want is someone holding you to ransom for £200 for a service manual, knowing that the other known surviving copy was just binned deliberately by a fellow enthusiast (I say this from experience).

Given that we now have the benefit of a wide and deep-reaching communication platform with which to match artefacts up with potential future owners, I do not think the future is as bleak as you paint it.
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