Donations To A Museum Are Lost To Philately Forever.

It is not surprising to me that a "Master Collector" or the folks in a online stamp forum would want to keep stamps in the hands of collectors. This is like asking people who like to cook if they want a nice kitchen.

What about philatelic books? Do these belong in the marketplace or in libraries?

Do opinions change if we are talking about something that is not related to our collecting, like dinosaur bones? Are these best kept in the marketplace and not in museums?
Don

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The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City) has two million objects in its 'collection'.

And that's just the stuff they've held onto.

Q/ What portion of that 'collection' will ever see the light of day?

They now offer 400,000 images for download & unrestricted use which, as I mentioned above, might give us a useful way forward.

As to the dinosaur bones, the question is not whether the museums should be emptied, but whether/not objects in private hands can stay there without fossilizing human progress.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I actually have no problem with the NPM having a good overall collection. By overall, I mean, for example, if there are 5 copies of a stamp, the NPM, ideally should just own 1. Leave the others for collectors. Having the NPM have a nice collection is a great way to promote the hobby.

I would prefer that the NPM, and museums, in general, not make a particular stamp or area un-collectible, due to owning everything in that area. Of course, this is a generalization, subject to exceptions, for items of major importance to our society.

Museums/Libraries like the APRL, in particular, should be a good repository of knowledge, aka books, and should have copies of almost everything possible. Of course, I collect books too, so I want a healthy market for philatelic literature.

I do not consider myself qualified to comment on the dinosaur community, as I'm unfamiliar with the dynamics of it. I suspect that many people who take the time to comment on a particular area, will do so out of some desire, or vested interest.

Is the point of this thread to discuss the issue of stamps belonging in museums or how museums administer donations? Obviously related but very different issues in my mind.
Don

Regarding stamps already donated, the NY Public Library had the Miller collection stashed away for decades. It was there, but, by most accounts, was not very accessible.

Fortunately, the solution to that problem availed itself, in an NPM curator who worked to get the collection on loan to the NPM, who had the resources at the time, to make it accessible to a broader audience. That included scans on their website.

So, in some cases, if one museum is not able, or willing to promote a particular item, loaning it to another can be a good idea.

When people leave things to museums, do they also leave the funds to display and curate them?

If not, the items could become a burden to the museum, especially if they are of sub-par quality. Hence all the stuff in storage boxes.

Morning all,

When I went to college back in the day (1970) I left a complete set of c1910 post cards showing how my home town looked in the hands of our local historical society. Several years later I asked to see them and, guess what, they had developed legs and went elsewhere. Fast forward twenty or so years I repurchased one of these cards on ebay. I know it was one of my cards because it was addressed to my grandmother.

Museum holdings may be forever but there are other holdings that can exceed a newer collector's active years. A bigger blockage to new younger collectors having access to material they are interest in is that it is locked up in our collections. Eventually our collections may be recycled into the market place but when and at what "premium" for this process?

I heard a tale about a public library in some Pennsylvania town (Easton?) that received a massive collection of stamps and philatelic material from a wealthy collector when he died -- in 1949. Some six crates of stuff sat in the library's basement until around 2015 or 2016 or so when the library asked a local collector to go through the material, I presume so that it could be disposed of. It took him many months, not just because of the volume of material, but also because of the quality. Among many other items, he discovered (or re-discovered) colonial franked letters, including one from George Washington (as I recall, to his wife). The collector eventually curated an exhibition of some of the material for the library, but I don't know what happened with the rest. I assume they still have it, since the collector community would have heard if a hoard of this size had hit the market. Sorry to be sketchy about some of the details, here, but it is a true story.

That is a true story. It is in the Chester County Historical Society.
Bill Schultz is the one who "unearthed" the collection. There were more than six crates but don't have the exact count, I'll check with Bill. He has volunteered his time to organize and catalog the collection. Bill also explained to the Historical Society it would be a good idea to put some of the best parts of the collection on exhibit which they did. It consisted of more than just Postal History. The exhibit lasted nine months (I think). During the exhibit Bill invited local collectors and collectors from around the country to give talks on their specialties once a month during the time the exhibition was open. This drew a lot of interest and was the beginning of "The Philatelic Gathering" which is a group of area philatelists which I am a member. We meet at The Chester County Historical Society once a month nine times a year. We show a variety of philatelic collecting areas, usually two a month with discussion afterward.
If you live in the West Chester area of Pennsylvania it is worth attending.

Vince

I have to agree with the caution against donating collections to museums. As a military historian I have visited the collection archives of several museums and can say with confidence that most of a museum's holding, even those that a collector might consider rare and desirable, never see the display floor, or if they do it is for a limited event. Unless a collector truly has a rare "museum quality" item, the collector market is where normal or hard to find pieces belong... and where they will be seen the most and bring the most enjoyment to others.