I would venture to say that in my long museum career, the most frequently asked questions are about the subject of deaccessioning. This is when a museum, following a careful and thoughtful review, decides to dispose of something from its collections. Depending upon the institution, and each organization is different, it is often a fundamental admission that a mistake was made in bringing the item into the collection. There are three big types of objects that are deaccessioned. First are objects that the museum received that simply are not genuine. Research evolves, and fakers get smarter all the time. Mistakes get made and are only discovered long after the fact. I recall deaccessioning a large collection of fake katsina carvings that people had been questioning for years. I met the carver, who acknowledged making them and peddling them to certain dealers who resold them to collectors, and now they were in the museum. What did we do with them? We burned them. Returning them to the market even with a label is potentially putting someone else at risk when that label is removed. Second are things that are in poor shape. Often a donor will come to a museum and present something that is a wreck in the hopes that the museum will then pay to have it restored. That can be a huge burden, especially if the object is really not crucial to the museums story. An example was a deacons bench that was given to a museum in which I worked. It had lost its original painted surface but was given in the hopes that it would be restored. Since no one knew what the original paint was, nor were there any clues, and we had three others, it was deaccessioned. Third are the objects that are duplicative. This gets a little complex. Art museums, for example, will often sell a painting to acquire a better example by the same artist, much the way a collector trades up over the years. History museums have a different challenge in that aesthetic merit is not a primary focus. For those institutions, it is a case where provenance (history of ownership) and originality come into play. Thus a museum might deaccession a generic childrens Victorian era stove that is missing a few parts and no one knows who owned it in favor of one that is complete and comes with a history in a local family. Disposing of the object once the Board agrees to deaccession it is the next step. In an ideal world, the museum would then offer the items for sale or trade to another museum. Sometimes this is not feasible. The items are then offered for sale through public auction with the museum board and staff being prohibited from bidding on them. This ensures that there is clear separation between the buyer and the seller of the items and that the actual price is a true reflection of the market. I have been through hundreds of deaccessions in my career. The ones that I am the most proud of are those where the process and ultimately the hammer price proved that our conclusions were correct. I did not want to sell something and set a world record. In many respects, I was just as happy to sell something where we lost money from what we paid for it. This validated our process. Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth of antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.