[vcf-midatlantic] Downsizers, Sick, Old, and Dying Collector -- Special Interest group to focus on "artifact wills"

[Steve Craft]

I like and support the idea of "something" and would be willing to help. As a long-time Apple ][ community member, I have watched a war of sorts going on with the passing of Tony Diaz a few years ago https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/local-estate-find-in-san-diego.43513/, as he was not an organized person in a lot of ways and ownership of "stuff" and what is valuable from a historical perspective vs financial is still very muddy. If there was a (sub)org that had information and a practical guide to professional services, that would probably help our community. By proxy/association, being into Vintage Computing puts us all into a kind of narrow set of (aged) demographics, mostly not 15-year-old Xbox gamers. 😊



Slightly on a tangent from this, I could imagine being able to take detail video of an entire collection, putting it in some long-term redundant digital storage, and then letting some AI models reason over the video to make an index of what it thinks is there (and put that into some storage after you curate it). Even something like that would be better than having your nephew pick through your things if something happened to you because they "know about tech". And the video indexing wouldn't care about the mess level.







-----Original Message-----
From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces at lists.vcfed.org<mailto:vcf-midatlantic-bounces at lists.vcfed.org>> On Behalf Of Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 1:18 PM
To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org<mailto:vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org>>
Cc: Bob Roswell <broswell at syssrc.com<mailto:broswell at syssrc.com>>
Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Downsizers, Sick, Old, and Dying Collector -- Special Interest group to focus on "artifact wills"



While on the sad topic of Bryan,  I would love to start/participate in a special interest group to focus on best practices for "artifact wills."







As the curator of a museum, I get calls, and emails many times a month from (usually) widows and children trying to figure out how dispose of their loved one's collection.



There is a mature industry for estate planning, but they usually don't include the collections of stuff.  Some general articles exist like https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kiplinger.com%2Fretirement%2Festate-planning-for-memorabilia-collectors&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc31d905fe2984b51f48108dc4e81e68d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638471567046344569%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TfIyqJfZRQyKcxppJQ74dKAlsbor0DmS6gNBUzgxRnE%3D&reserved=0<https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/estate-planning-for-memorabilia-collectors>











I could imagine the following results off the top of my head:







1)  Documentation Corps: VCFED would have a corps of volunteers who could visit home/storage units while the collector is still alive.  We could document what is there and capture oral histories from the collector.







2) Publish a document on disposition of the stuff



                *  Donation to museum (with tax write-off)



               * Gift to other individuals



               * Consignment or Swap Meets



              * Ebay/Craigslist



                * High end Auction houses (RR Auction Etc)



              * Electronics Recyclers







The document would provide contacts as well as a brief overview of the process.







Anyone interest?











Bob Roswell



Curator, Computer Museum @ System Source



https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmuseum.syssrc.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc31d905fe2984b51f48108dc4e81e68d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638471567046353657%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=bNkbFDu0rt1hl2ic4KfURYIost%2ByAMVDNAEx7WDU378%3D&reserved=0<https://museum.syssrc.com/>



broswell at syssrc.com<mailto:broswell at syssrc.com>



410-771-5544 ext 4336