[NHCOLL-L:2417] Re: Donation appraisals

[Charles F Sturm]

Tiffany,

I will offer a few observations:

1) Donors often feel a collection is worth more than its actual worth. I
call this the emotional factor..."Dad spent his whole life working on this
collection, it must be worth a fortune."

2) The commercial value of a collection is often only a third of the
appraised value. Sometimes maybe 50%. This allows a dealer to recover
costs for picking up a collection, cataloging it, advertising it, and then
waiting until it sells. They have to may some margin of profit as well.
When my Dad was alive and collected coins, he had two books, one listed
the "value of a coin" the other what a dealer would pay for that coin. The
differences were sometimes quite far apart.

3) Without good locality data and adequate field notes, the collection may
be worthless. Often donors are not aware of this fact.

4) There is a real cost for a museum to incorporate a donation into their
collection. This cost may represent getting the collection to the museum,
sorting it, cataloging it, placing it in archival trays, vials, etc.
Unless a collection is very valuable, it may not be worth it to accept a
marignally worthwhile collection.

5) There is often a cost for valuating a collection. Sometimes somebody
may evaluate the collection gratis, especially if they know that it will
be donated to a not-for-profit institution; but this is not a certainty at
all. Sometimes there will be a cost of 10% of the value of the collection
for the services of the person evaluating the collection. It's not much
different than what people who evaluate antiques do.

These are some random thoughts, I hope you find them interesting.

Regards,
Charlie
******************************************************************************
Charlie Sturm, Jr
Research Associate - Section of Mollusks
                     Carnegie Museum of Natural History
	 	     Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Assistant Professor - Family Medicine

csturmjr at pitt.edu