Buying a collection

How most significant material moves, and the transaction with the most ways to go wrong.

The best source of good material

Old collections contain material collected when localities were open that are now closed, bought when prices were different, and selected by somebody with judgment.

They also contain the old labels, which are provenance, and which are the part most likely to be destroyed in the handling.

What you are actually buying

Material, documentation, and a story about where it came from.

A documented collection is worth substantially more than the same specimens undocumented, and the difference is entirely paper.

So the valuation question is not only what the specimens are worth. It is what fraction of them can still be connected to their data by the time you have unpacked.

Valuing one

Sample rather than count. Look at enough to establish the average and find the top end.

The top ten percent usually carries most of the value, and the bottom half is frequently bulk.

Check for the failures this property describes: pyrite decay spreading through a drawer, efflorescence, labels embrittled by acid, specimens in PVC boxes. All of them are discounts, and a decaying sulfide drawer is a live problem you are buying.

Establish that the seller has the right to sell, particularly for anything self-collected or any fossil.

The first 48 hours

This is where collections are destroyed, by tidying.

Photograph everything before moving anything: drawers as found, labels in place.

Move specimen and label together, always, or move nothing.

Keep every old slip, including the ones that look like rubbish.

Record the collection itself as provenance for every specimen in it, before the boxes get mixed with your own.

Then process at your own pace. The material can wait; the association between the stone and the paper cannot.

References