In a message dated 8/17/00 8:25:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> Highlights include a 125-pound polished jade boulder,
>  a 2.14-carat alexandrite, the skull of a saber-toothed
>  tiger, the large foot claw from a Tyrannasaurus Rex, a
>  nest of 15 dinosaur eggs, a fuel cell from a fallen
>  Russian satellite, and an actual piece of the Apollo
>  11 command module.

>  No, I'm not advertising for them.  It seems very wrong
>  for these items to be available and into the hands of
>  the general public.  These sound like they truly
>  belong in museums, not in the hands of someone who
>  might appreciate them, but whose family may have no
>  interest and destroy.

Why should we prevent the general public from buying and selling artifacts
that were legally and ethically obtained? I don't see anything wildly special
about the above listed items. I'm sure there's enough jade and alexandrite to
go around as well as sabre-tooth tiger skulls and T-Rex claws. Museums have
storage problems to begin with so I'm sure they can't keep every bone and
fossil unless it is extremely unique or different. I'd be wary of auction
catalog descriptions as you never know how much the person writing the
description really knows or how they verified the info. What's supposedly
"rare" to an auction house might be quite common in the museum world but just
not very well known to the general public.

As for the Russian satellite, that probably fell to Earth and is space junk.
I don't know of a museum that would want that in the first place. The Apollo
module I'd question that as the story that goes with it seems a little far
fetched. I'd agree with you that if it is authentic, it should go to the
Smithsonian and be put back on the command module that they have.

I seriously doubt that someone who pays tens of thousands of dollars to get
an artifact like these would want to destroy it. Collectors can be more anal
than curators when it comes to their collections. And who knows, museums
might be bidding on these items.

>  And, if these are deaccessioned pieces by our members
>  here, how do you justify not putting them out there
>  for other museums?  It feels like a breach of trust.

Again, I don't think there's enough museum storage space in the world to hold
everything that should belong in a museum. If it's been studied to death and
isn't all that unique in the first place, why not release it to the public
who can enjoy it? At the very least, donate it to schools to use in their
education programs. There's plenty of artifacts to go around and I don't
think museums should consider themselves elitist and claim that they should
be the only ones to have such things.

Deb

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