To buy or not to buy
With acquisition budgets slashed or non-existent, museums are looking for new ways to buy objects
Imagine a scenario where you’ve got so much stuff you no longer have room to store it all. Many of your possessions have been packed away out of sight for so long, you’re not even sure what you’ve got any more.
Thank heavens for eBay. Founded in 1995 just before the dot-com bubble, the website is now the world’s largest online market- place, with 25 million sellers, 157 million buyers in 190 countries, and more than 800 million items listed for sale.
For individuals, the website offers a chance to release some cash from the attic. But the public aren’t the only customers. Museums have sold items from their collections using eBay – both ethically, as part of a programme of collections rationalisation and disposal, and unethically.
And online auction websites are places for museums to buy as much as they are to sell. Storage spaces might be overflowing and acquisition budgets empty, but collecting remains a core part of what museums do.
Nick Merriman, the director of Manchester Museum, called for a new campaign to support organisations to continue collecting in his keynote presentation at the Collections Trust’s annual conference in September.
Speaking to Museums Journal ahead of the event, Merriman said: “Collecting for the future has always been a big part of what museums do, but the way museums collect needs to change. At Manchester Museum, we’re looking to collect around themes, such as migration and water, rather than specific objects.
So, while objects remain the central focus, we’re increasingly interested in the documentation information that also needs collecting, such as personal stories and information from social media. My call is for museums to start collecting for the 21st century, not the 19th.”
This approach has already been adopted by the Oriental Museum, part of Durham University. The museum has implemented a contemporary collecting programme that aims to mirror, expand and support its historic collections, and buying from eBay is a part of this. The institution has acquired a number of South Asian film posters and Vietnam war-era propaganda on the web- site, as well as Japanese anime, manga and other pop culture items, such as a Hello Kitty electric guitar.
It is not just the fact that these items are easily available on eBay that has made the
site such a useful resource. It is also that “eBay is a cultural barometer of taste, which is really interesting to observe”, says Craig Barclay, the curator of Durham’s Oriental Museum. He likens collecting from eBay to curators of the past visiting tenements to salvage items of social historical importance, although now it is on a global scale.
Museum staff have been working with students from the University of Japan’s UK campus in Durham to ensure it is purchasing a relevant and representative range of modern material.
Determining value
Without a ring-fenced acquisitions budget, Barclay is forced to actively pursue various sources of funding and to demonstrate the value of items for the museum and the university in order to continue buying.
“Museums that don’t collect become artefacts in their own right,” he says. “We’d be failing in our duty to future generations if we weren’t taking this opportunity to add material to our collections while it is still current, easily available and relatively inexpensive. It will be harder to collect further down the line.”
Oliver Douglas, the assistant curator at the Museum of English Rural Life (Merl) in Reading, echoes Barclay’s sentiment. “A curatorial sense of value doesn’t always reflect what people in the real world think or value,” he says.
“If museums acquire stuff that reflects what real people are buying today, in 20 or 30 years’ time these objects might be the only examples still in existence. EBay is a way to understand which items have cultural value to people today, and if we don’t pay attention to that, then they might be lost.”
Auction websites such as eBay may provide good collecting sources for museums, but their existence may ironically have resulted in fewer object donations from members of the public.
“The popularity of eBay, and TV shows like Cash in the Attic, means that people are increasingly aware of the potential financial value of their possessions,” says Adam Bell, the assistant keeper of social history at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (Twam).
Gail Stewart-Bye, the curator of objects at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire, agrees. “People often phone us about objects, but frequently they are just looking for a valuation so they can stick the item on eBay,” she says. “We still get given large objects such as cars, but things like mascots, badges and other decorative items go straight on eBay these days.”
Recognising that if you can’t beat them you might as well join them, both Bell and Stewart-Bye regularly use eBay to buy items for their respective museums. For Bell, the site offers access to items of relatively low material value that are interesting from a social or local history point of view, such as postcards, beer labels and biscuit tins, like those produced by South Shields manufacturer Wright’s Biscuits.
“EBay has allowed us to collect items and build our collection in a representational way that we would otherwise not have been able to do,” Bell says. Another benefit of eBay is that it gives museums an idea of value for insurance purposes – even for items not purchased on the site.
“Museum objects aren’t always the type of thing bought and sold at auction houses, and when they do go up for sale, museums often have to pay for an object’s sale information,” says Douglas at Merl in Reading.
“Curators don’t have time to sit in auction houses recording how much items sell for, so eBay can be a useful reference resource in that regard.”
But there are challenges too. Many museums have strict controls around procurements, meaning staff normally bid for items on eBay using their personal accounts, then claim back the money. In turn, this means most will stick to buying lower-value items.
The difficulty in ascertaining the provenance of an object, and the fact that in most cases museum staff are not able to inspect items physically, means that big-ticket items on eBay are frequently off-limits to most museums.
And being unable to inspect items in person can make finding acquisition funding difficult. The V&A Purchase Grant Fund, for example, says that it will not consider supporting purchases from online auction websites for these reasons.
The question of provenance
Many sellers on eBay are professional outlets, but even when an individual is selling an item, they won’t necessarily share the history of that object in the listing.
“The big problem with buying from eBay is that you can’t be sure of an item’s provenance,” says Rosalind Westwood, the Derbyshire museums manager at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, which purchased a number of items from eBay for Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the 18th Century, a five-year acquisitions project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme.
“One of my big worries is that some people sling stuff onto eBay because they aren’t interested in its cultural value, so the history and social context of that item can be lost,” Westwood says. “It raises the question of whether museums exist just to collect objects, or whether they exist to collect the stories that relate to those objects. And is it our responsibility as curators to put together collections, or should we leave that to private collectors who we hope will deposit their collections and research with the museum at a later date?”
The Collecting Cultures programme was open to museums buying from eBay, and a number of projects it supported actively pursued this line of enquiry. For some, the lack of contextual history available on eBay was not a problem. Douglas says the aim of Merl’s Col- lecting Cultures project – Collecting 20th Century Rural Culture – was to find objects that explored representations of the countryside.
A toy tractor purchased from eBay in pristine condition and still in its box lacks a background story. But a similar item, which has been well used, was donated to the museum by a local woman. Together, the items illustrate two sides of the same story.
There are also ways that museums can ensure their collections records reflect the importance of material, even in cases when the personal narrative of a specific object has been lost.
The Oriental Museum, for example, has involved people from different communities in the cataloguing process of objects, while Merl is increasingly keeping Twitter com- ments in its collection files.
Museums can also contact sellers after they have purchased an item to find out more about its provenance. Twam’s Adam Bell always contacts sellers to ask them to fill in a transfer of title form, and he says the majority of them are happy to do so. “One seller even donated an object when they realised that I was buying for a museum,” he adds.
Anyone who has ever used eBay will know that bidding on items can be strangely addictive, and that can be an issue. “If I spent too much time on eBay then I would be buying things all the time,” says Merl’s Douglas, “and that could create a massive burden for the museum.”
If museums are to continue collecting in a modern and sustainable way, then they must also continue to review existing collections and, where necessary, dispose of items in line with the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics.
“Collecting should be strategic,” Douglas says. “Many museums are hell-bent on keeping everything, but the vast majority of visitors are not interested in all these things. It is simply not sufficient to keep hold of items that are useless in terms of public engagement.”
Tips for buying on ebay
Thank heavens for eBay. Founded in 1995 just before the dot-com bubble, the website is now the world’s largest online market- place, with 25 million sellers, 157 million buyers in 190 countries, and more than 800 million items listed for sale.
For individuals, the website offers a chance to release some cash from the attic. But the public aren’t the only customers. Museums have sold items from their collections using eBay – both ethically, as part of a programme of collections rationalisation and disposal, and unethically.
And online auction websites are places for museums to buy as much as they are to sell. Storage spaces might be overflowing and acquisition budgets empty, but collecting remains a core part of what museums do.
Nick Merriman, the director of Manchester Museum, called for a new campaign to support organisations to continue collecting in his keynote presentation at the Collections Trust’s annual conference in September.
Speaking to Museums Journal ahead of the event, Merriman said: “Collecting for the future has always been a big part of what museums do, but the way museums collect needs to change. At Manchester Museum, we’re looking to collect around themes, such as migration and water, rather than specific objects.
So, while objects remain the central focus, we’re increasingly interested in the documentation information that also needs collecting, such as personal stories and information from social media. My call is for museums to start collecting for the 21st century, not the 19th.”
This approach has already been adopted by the Oriental Museum, part of Durham University. The museum has implemented a contemporary collecting programme that aims to mirror, expand and support its historic collections, and buying from eBay is a part of this. The institution has acquired a number of South Asian film posters and Vietnam war-era propaganda on the web- site, as well as Japanese anime, manga and other pop culture items, such as a Hello Kitty electric guitar.
It is not just the fact that these items are easily available on eBay that has made the
site such a useful resource. It is also that “eBay is a cultural barometer of taste, which is really interesting to observe”, says Craig Barclay, the curator of Durham’s Oriental Museum. He likens collecting from eBay to curators of the past visiting tenements to salvage items of social historical importance, although now it is on a global scale.
Museum staff have been working with students from the University of Japan’s UK campus in Durham to ensure it is purchasing a relevant and representative range of modern material.
Determining value
Without a ring-fenced acquisitions budget, Barclay is forced to actively pursue various sources of funding and to demonstrate the value of items for the museum and the university in order to continue buying.
“Museums that don’t collect become artefacts in their own right,” he says. “We’d be failing in our duty to future generations if we weren’t taking this opportunity to add material to our collections while it is still current, easily available and relatively inexpensive. It will be harder to collect further down the line.”
Oliver Douglas, the assistant curator at the Museum of English Rural Life (Merl) in Reading, echoes Barclay’s sentiment. “A curatorial sense of value doesn’t always reflect what people in the real world think or value,” he says.
“If museums acquire stuff that reflects what real people are buying today, in 20 or 30 years’ time these objects might be the only examples still in existence. EBay is a way to understand which items have cultural value to people today, and if we don’t pay attention to that, then they might be lost.”
Auction websites such as eBay may provide good collecting sources for museums, but their existence may ironically have resulted in fewer object donations from members of the public.
“The popularity of eBay, and TV shows like Cash in the Attic, means that people are increasingly aware of the potential financial value of their possessions,” says Adam Bell, the assistant keeper of social history at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (Twam).
Gail Stewart-Bye, the curator of objects at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire, agrees. “People often phone us about objects, but frequently they are just looking for a valuation so they can stick the item on eBay,” she says. “We still get given large objects such as cars, but things like mascots, badges and other decorative items go straight on eBay these days.”
Recognising that if you can’t beat them you might as well join them, both Bell and Stewart-Bye regularly use eBay to buy items for their respective museums. For Bell, the site offers access to items of relatively low material value that are interesting from a social or local history point of view, such as postcards, beer labels and biscuit tins, like those produced by South Shields manufacturer Wright’s Biscuits.
“EBay has allowed us to collect items and build our collection in a representational way that we would otherwise not have been able to do,” Bell says. Another benefit of eBay is that it gives museums an idea of value for insurance purposes – even for items not purchased on the site.
“Museum objects aren’t always the type of thing bought and sold at auction houses, and when they do go up for sale, museums often have to pay for an object’s sale information,” says Douglas at Merl in Reading.
“Curators don’t have time to sit in auction houses recording how much items sell for, so eBay can be a useful reference resource in that regard.”
But there are challenges too. Many museums have strict controls around procurements, meaning staff normally bid for items on eBay using their personal accounts, then claim back the money. In turn, this means most will stick to buying lower-value items.
The difficulty in ascertaining the provenance of an object, and the fact that in most cases museum staff are not able to inspect items physically, means that big-ticket items on eBay are frequently off-limits to most museums.
And being unable to inspect items in person can make finding acquisition funding difficult. The V&A Purchase Grant Fund, for example, says that it will not consider supporting purchases from online auction websites for these reasons.
The question of provenance
Many sellers on eBay are professional outlets, but even when an individual is selling an item, they won’t necessarily share the history of that object in the listing.
“The big problem with buying from eBay is that you can’t be sure of an item’s provenance,” says Rosalind Westwood, the Derbyshire museums manager at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, which purchased a number of items from eBay for Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the 18th Century, a five-year acquisitions project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme.
“One of my big worries is that some people sling stuff onto eBay because they aren’t interested in its cultural value, so the history and social context of that item can be lost,” Westwood says. “It raises the question of whether museums exist just to collect objects, or whether they exist to collect the stories that relate to those objects. And is it our responsibility as curators to put together collections, or should we leave that to private collectors who we hope will deposit their collections and research with the museum at a later date?”
The Collecting Cultures programme was open to museums buying from eBay, and a number of projects it supported actively pursued this line of enquiry. For some, the lack of contextual history available on eBay was not a problem. Douglas says the aim of Merl’s Col- lecting Cultures project – Collecting 20th Century Rural Culture – was to find objects that explored representations of the countryside.
A toy tractor purchased from eBay in pristine condition and still in its box lacks a background story. But a similar item, which has been well used, was donated to the museum by a local woman. Together, the items illustrate two sides of the same story.
There are also ways that museums can ensure their collections records reflect the importance of material, even in cases when the personal narrative of a specific object has been lost.
The Oriental Museum, for example, has involved people from different communities in the cataloguing process of objects, while Merl is increasingly keeping Twitter com- ments in its collection files.
Museums can also contact sellers after they have purchased an item to find out more about its provenance. Twam’s Adam Bell always contacts sellers to ask them to fill in a transfer of title form, and he says the majority of them are happy to do so. “One seller even donated an object when they realised that I was buying for a museum,” he adds.
Anyone who has ever used eBay will know that bidding on items can be strangely addictive, and that can be an issue. “If I spent too much time on eBay then I would be buying things all the time,” says Merl’s Douglas, “and that could create a massive burden for the museum.”
If museums are to continue collecting in a modern and sustainable way, then they must also continue to review existing collections and, where necessary, dispose of items in line with the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics.
“Collecting should be strategic,” Douglas says. “Many museums are hell-bent on keeping everything, but the vast majority of visitors are not interested in all these things. It is simply not sufficient to keep hold of items that are useless in terms of public engagement.”
Tips for buying on ebay
- Perusing eBay requires a certain amount of time and effort, but the beauty of this online auction website is that it is easy to watch items and receive notifications via email or through an app when an item’s listing is due to expire.
- Perusing eBay requires Most successful eBay Use PayPal to buy Avoid items where you Make use of eBay a certain amount of time and effort, but the beauty of this online auction website is that it is easy to watch items and receive notifications via email or through an app when an item’s listing is due to expire.
- Most successful eBay buyers bid for items at the last minute in order to trump other interested parties.
- Use PayPal to buy items, because it offers protection if items are not as described.
- Avoid items where you can’t be sure of the authenticity, such as signed posters.
- Make use of eBay features, such as following certain sellers and setting up saved search terms.
- Remember that items described as vintage of antique may come at a premium.
- Don't discount sellers' ability for bad spelling - and vary your search terms to reveal items that other buyers might not have noticed.