What will happen to your collection when you're gone?

[springpin]

Great question, and one I have contemplated. I won't bore you with my analysis of the various options, but I will share something with you that shocked (and disturbed) me when I first learned of it.

One option is to donate your collection to a museum, such as The Smithsonian or Cooperstown. Your intent in doing so would be to keep your collection whole in recognition of all the sweat equity you put into amassing it, so future generations can enjoy looking at your favorite eye candy. Not necessarily so, for two reasons.

The charter of the museum dictates it actions regarding donations. Many museums have in their charter that they have the right to sell off any item they wish, at the sole discretion of the museum. The technical term for this is "deaccession". So you donate your prize X in the belief people will enjoy looking at it in perpetuity. If the museum doesn't hold your X in the highest regard, they can sell off your X to get funds for whatever purposes needed, e.g., maintenance and repair of the museum. There may be a limitation in the charter that the museum can't sell X to purchase a Y (another type of sports item). But if you think your donation will be the property of the museum in perpetuity, not necessarily so.

Second (and slightly less offensive to me), a museum may accept your donation (most museums have an accessions committee that decides what items they will accept), but there is no guarantee the museum will ever put your item on display. It could wind up in what is called the "archives". In one museum I visited I got permission to enter the archives. I'm not a bat collector, but I saw hundreds of bats (of the game-used variety), that were placed in tubes (not sealed in any way) that were stacked horizontally. It looked like a bat mauseleum. I wondered how heartbroken the donors of these bats would have been if they saw their repository within the museum.

It is not the fault of the museum that they don't display all their items. There are permanent displays and rotating displays. If your X isn't a sufficient stunner to become part of a permanent display, it must either wait its turn for its "at bat", or forever be banished to "riding the bench". Museum management is a science, and museums have their own stats, just like in baseball. One set of them pertain to percentage of items in their holdings that never get off the bench. For a museum like The Smithsonian, the number is staggering. Over the decades people have donated far more items than the museum can ever reasonably hope to display. And a big portion of the items are stored in satellite warehouses. I read somewhere that the percentage of unaccounted for items in some libraries and museums (as Presidentials) can be enormous. I believe I read it was the Reagan Library that is missing about 1,000,000 items of the approximately 5,000,000 that were originally indexed. The items may not necessarily be lost or stolen, but their whereabouts are unaccounted for.

My take on all this is the museum option is not high on my list. If the museum is going to sell it off, I can sell it off just as efficiently, and maybe even donate the proceeds to the museum. If the museum isn't going to display my donation, what is the point of making the donation? I have considered donating a portion of my collection to museums, but I fully understand what might be the ultimate fate of my donation.