Donation to Museums Thread

[JimDon]

One of my favorite things to do when picking is when I can find a great home for an item. I regularly donate (occasionally sell) to museums etc. It goes back to when I was a kid and would hang out at this coin shop. Some guy tried to sell some coins and when he was offered what he thought was a low price he said he would rather give it away than to sell it to the coin dealer. He then turned to me and gave me the coin. I still have the 1853 quarter in my collection. Some of my recent donations/sales to museums etc were a card ticket from a dance in 1944 from Bangor England. It was purchased by the South Shields Museum for their archives. In the same lot I also got a program from WWII for the presentation of the A award by the Department of War to the Campbell Soup company. Since I have a business relationship with Campbell's I reached out to their archivist and they were thrilled to get it for their archives. I received this nice card from them.
I also donated a beautiful drawing by Gary Gee to the Jacksonville State University for their archives. He was a beloved art professor with the university and they did not have any of his work. I was glad to send it to them. In exchange they sent me a great JSU sweatshirt (my request). I am curious if anyone else has had any similar experiences and thought a thread would be great!

 

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[cyberdan]

I work at my local museum and we get donations every now and then. We do not have a single square foot of empty space. But we do have a rental storage unit (or two) most donations go there. Right now we have a very heavy donation (500+ lbs) in one corner and want to get rid of it. It was used to make integrated circuits in the 1960s (I think) It was never even used in this county. The inventor retired and moved here and brought it with him. When he died it was passed on to us. Now we don't know what to do with it. It is taking up 4 sq feet of floor space.

We also have a very nice donation that is in our main display case. A $5 gold coin from a ship that sunk off our coast 150 years ago. A company came in a salvaged about half the thousands of coins a few decades ago. (they say after a big storm some gold coins still wash up on our beach. I live 4 miles away)

Now about getting free coins at a local coin store. That happened to me once only it was the store owner gave me a coin. It was an extremely fine 1909 S VDB Lincoln. We were talking about counterfeit coins and he gave me one that had fooled him.

 

[Beans]

I would not donate maybe sell. A friend of mine loaned not donated some items to a local museum and he had to sue them to get his stuff back. Nothing wrong with donating just not what I would do.

 

[JimDon]

I work at my local museum and we get donations every now and then. We do not have a single square foot of empty space. But we do have a rental storage unit (or two) most donations go there. Right now we have a very heavy donation (500+ lbs) in one corner and want to get rid of it. It was used to make integrated circuits in the 1960s (I think) It was never even used in this county. The inventor retired and moved here and brought it with him. When he died it was passed on to us. Now we don't know what to do with it. It is taking up 4 sq feet of floor space.

We also have a very nice donation that is in our main display case. A $5 gold coin from a ship that sunk off our coast 150 years ago. A company came in a salvaged about half the thousands of coins a few decades ago. (they say after a big storm some gold coins still wash up on our beach. I live 4 miles away)

Now about getting free coins at a local coin store. That happened to me once only it was the store owner gave me a coin. It was an extremely fine 1909 S VDB Lincoln. We were talking about counterfeit coins and he gave me one that had fooled him.

I do not donate unsolicited items. I made sure they did in fact want it. Now about those beaches....

 

[trdhrdr007]

I'm with cyberdan on this one. There's no doubt in my mind that the curators of the museums want the items. Most people in that line of work have what polite people call "the desire to acquire" (hoarders). Unfortunately the vast majority of what they acquire goes into a collection or archive.....both of which are fancy words for storage. Those things are almost never seen by the public again.

I'll give an example of this. I bought a WWII parachute harness complete with packed parachute from the estate of a gentleman that was a bomber pilot. I talked with a couple of aviation museums about it. They said they'd love to have it. When it came down to it they both admitted they had multiples of that item in storage, they weren't interested in paying anything, & the one I had would also go into storage. I sold it to a private collector instead.

Having said that, there are things of sufficient rarity and/or historical importance that they should be in museums.

 

[captain flintlock]

We sold a large sterling bowl that my wife bought at a flea market for $5.00 to the Princeton Charter Club for $1000. They had a large sterling collection and wanted to add to it with the piece we had. It was originally a wedding gift to a couple from some of their fellow members of the club. It's a dinning club that still exists.

 

[Lost&Found]

My wife and I are planning a move (about to make an offer on a property) to Cold Spring NY. Located there is The West Point Foundry Preserve which produced the Parrot Cannon used in the Civil War. A few weeks ago I posted about a solid shot 32 lb cannon ball that I received from an estate and am considering donating it to them if they are interested.

 

[SnakemanBill]

I found a very nice fossilized marlin rostrum while hunting in a phosphate mine in NC. I agreed to donate it to a local museum as it was in much better condition than the one they had on display. In return for the donation they were to make a mold and then make a copy for me and display mine with a plaque in the museum. they never made a copy and on my next visit to the museum I found that they used it for "education purposes" and it was dropped and shattered. I would think twice before donating again.

 

[diggummup]

I gave an old photo album back to the local Rotary club one time. Bunch of Rotary photos from the 70's, nothing special. That's about it, lol.

 

[tamrock]

I paid $15.00 on a watercolor I found by this artist Silvio Fracassini, just to donate to a museum in my area as I found he was born in Louisville, Colorado which is the next town over in 1907. Silvio Fracassini - Artist, Fine Art Prices, Auction Records for Silvio Fracassini