From WBAL...

The B&O Railroad Museum is cleaning out its surplus of trains and putting thousands of items on sale in an upcoming yard sale.

The museum is putting its little treasures up for sale in its round house on Sept. 7.

"It's one of those things where, when they come off exhibit, what do you do with them? You put them in storage. The reality is they don't see the light of day again, so this is a great opportunity for us to clear out some space and for people to get some memories themselves," explained museum Chief Curator Dave Shackelford.

There will be a bit of everything available, including old history books, hundreds of pictures depicting life on the railroad and exhibit panels.

"We have HO-scale model train cars. We have B&O box cars, tank cars, baggage tags from the railroad company – literally, we have thousands of these -- and lantern globes," Shackelford said.

He said items can range from $2-$100. Since it's a yard sale, some prices are final, but some can also be talked down, Shackelford said. Visitors can also buy raffle tickets to win big prizes like some 1940s-era Sleepy Hollow seats.

"We've got a diesel engine bell. They were actually operated by compressed air, and even with our trains we're running today, this is the type of bell that's actually being rung," Shackelford said.

All of the money raised will go toward the museum's restoration projects, some of which are still in the works from the President's Day blizzard of 2003.

"A typical restoration is about $250,000, and that's a cosmetic operation. That's not getting it operational -- that's just taking care of what needs to be done," Shackelford said.

Wonder if the sale includes GG1 #4876.

If so I'm coming to the sale!

Just out of curiosity (there's no way I'm going to make it all the way from Seattle), but is there some sort of concise list showing all the items the B&O Museum is putting up for sale?

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Posting from "we never have any yard sales this fascinating,"

This goes to show you that even when you donate something to a museum it might not be safe forever. Our local historical society gets so much stuff they hold an annual auction.

I recently ran into a librarian's cartoon about that syndrome, depicting a customer buttonholing a library aide at a shelf labeled "BOOK SALE":


Ask any librarian. This happens all the time. Routinely.

Right, but we all know what happens. The majority of donations are likely not from a historian or even someone that knows what they have. Many times it's the children of a deceased railroad worker/collector who is cleaning out the basement/attic and brings in the whole shebang. 37 years of musty MRR/Trains magazines, Jim Beam/Avon train bottles, every train related Hallmark ornament, that same print of the Blue Ridge Summit station in the deep frame, The Locomotives that Baldwin Built, and one small box of rule books/time tables/photos. We are eternally gratefully for the latter, but what about the rest? I can only imagine the tonnage that that the B&O museum has amassed, and unloading it is likely the best thing that can be done with it. I'm sure the same is true for most historical societies.

Museums even swap GOOD stuff for other items they might want more in the collection. I've done a few swaps like this with some high profile (non-RR) museums in the past.
The Museum of Flight in Seattle has a massive book n' stuff sale each year, usually in the Fall. I've bought a lot of neat stuff there in years past, including last year, a French book on armored trains that costs a bundle through collector circles but I mine for ten bucks as it was a museum that didn't care...

The Maryland Rail Heritage Library (joint Balto. Streetcar Museum and Baltimore Chapter NRHS) is having two tables at the next Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium, Md. Oct. 27-28, where we plan to unload HUNDREDS of surplus books, primarily from three separate estates.

We've taken the policy that we're not even going to try and deal with the "coffee table" books made popular by the bargain-book sections of Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, etc., or the Beebe "High Iron/Highball/etc." We dole those out to free-book giveaway programs in Baltimore and the DC area. The other books, we price to move, albeit realistically.

We used to do it easier and ship the surplus to a well-known auction house in Pennsylvania, but said house has gotten much choosier about what it takes, because much of the market is glutted with the same redundancies thanks to "pack-rat" railfans now dying off.

Reminds me of the museum at Dover AFB. Years ago, I saw a listing of things they wouldn't take as donations. One was the suitcase-style zippered flight bag that almost every pilot from WW2 into the 60s was issued. They age badly and there's millions of them out there (you can't give them away, even to this day, unless someone painted them with some cool or were owned by someone famous). The museum had so many at that point, they refused to take any more. There were other items on the list as well, but the bag thing stuck in my head because I had a couple of them myself, given to me at W2 displays from vet families who were couldn't bring themsevles to throw them away.
Beats me why other museums can't simply say in a polite way that, "We're not a clearing house for you Dad's stack of modern RR picture books or wrinkled stack of Model RR'er magazines." There's no reason why a museum can't say that they're only looking for specific items. Where's the harm in that?

Consider the other side.

If I'm out to dispose of an large block of material from a specialty I know little about and care less... I Do Not Want experts giving me chump prices for the good stuff, and leaving me with a large block of unsaleable trash that I don't realize is trash, so I waste the time of several other people at other museums, embarrass myself, and waste a lot of ebay listing fees.

So no. No splitsies, no cherry picking. Just like Storage Wars, take the kaboodle or take a hike.

So back to our side, sure, I'll take 55 years of Model Railroaders to get something awesome.

We're not even remotely talking about the same thing. You're talking about selling items. I'm talking about museum donations. A museum can (and frankly, should) be picky about what they accept.
There's no 'chump prices' when you're offering stuff to a museum; there's no prices at all! If museums in your area are actually buying stuff from people, I need to move to where you are, because they usually don't pay for donations in any place I've ever been.

Your distinction is a trifle. The same basic dynamic applies.

1. I enter the situation with a disposal problem.
2. If I let Museum A and B cherry-pick, then when I invite Museum C and D, all they see is junk and won't want any of it.
3. I exit the situation with a disposal problem.

Doesn't matter whether I'm being paid money. Either way I still have to waste a bunch of people's time, waste time on eBay trying to sell the stuff and finally call a dumpster and stevedore a bunch of ratty old boxes that were grand-dad's beloved treasures, and face all the feelings that come up with that.

Avoiding all that was the whole POINT of calling in a museum or collector.

So what on earth did dealing with museums do for me? NOTHING but a huge waste of time.

To take the devil's advocate view.

A to the Men. A group I dedicated many years to decided to unload MR and MRC mags from the early days to the mid century and convention of grapics.

This is why Better World Books exists. Here's their website:
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/
(I see a few people claim to have had shipping problems, but I haven't in several years of dealing with them.)
I've found everything from popular novels to a copy of a local railroad history that I never thought I'd acquire. If you have something they think they might be able to sell, and your museum doesn't want it, it's better than a dumpster. (The magazines will still be a problem. Old Railroad Man's Magazine copies g better than anything else, I think.)