What Will Happen

[Lee]

A noted antique arms dealer once told me that he was considering offering a collection dispersal service oriented around publishing a very high quality catalogue of a collection that would serve not only as a record of the collection, but as a sales tool for its dispersal. Of course, single owner auction sales have also generated such catalogs.

Perhaps, as a collector does approach 'end stage' in collecting activities, the publication of such a catalogue - showing the collection at its zenith - is a way of documenting the transient and also very importantly sharing with future collectors where the objects have been and also perhaps some stories about what the present collector learned from or went through acquiring the artifact (as in some of Ewart Oakeshott's writings.) Perhaps this may be a useful, productive and rewarding route when the times of building a collection do come to an end.

Such a catalogue does not have to be associated with a sale, of course, and at worst, the executor of the collector's estate might find it very useful.