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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robp, post: 5193528, member: 96746&quot;]Museums are a double edged sword. Yes they have numismatic material in one place that can be viewed by the public for pleasure or research simply by asking, but secondly they don&#039;t usually have a full inventory available for scrutiny. The down-side of this is of course you can&#039;t ask to see an item you don&#039;t know is there. The saying &#039;Out of sight, out of mind&#039; is applicable. With the larger museums having collections of literally hundreds of thousands of coins, a full inventory is the only practical way for interested persons to identify what they wish to view. Because of this, I personally find that museums frequently save things from the public, rather than for the public. </p><p><br /></p><p>The financial resources necessary to provide access to the collections are a current problem in the UK. With staffing kept to a minimum and a member of staff required to accompany anyone going into the back office where the majority of the collection is kept, it is difficult to fit in individual visits around the various school trips and other duties.</p><p><br /></p><p>There is a case to be made for museums having an example of each die used for example as their main purpose in life is to save historical items for posterity. Indeed, the Clarke-Thornhill bequest to the BM in 1935 stipulated they could take any coin from his collection where they didn&#039;t have an example of a coin from the die. The BM did very well out of this and Baldwin&#039;s were a bit miffed, as the 1937 sale was only a fraction of the original collection. </p><p><br /></p><p>From some collectors&#039; viewpoint, the 5500 coins in the Lenborough hoard acquired by a museum usefully stopped the market being flooded with Cnut pennies, which would have depressed prices for those who worry about such things.</p><p><br /></p><p>As collectors we all have the right to dispose of our collections as we see fit. Some will sell up, some will bequeath the collection or part of it to a museum, occasionally a museum will acquire a collection in lieu of death duties (e.g. Peck&#039;s George III Soho patterns went to Birmingham Museum in lieu).</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s no one size fits all solution.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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