Summer Sale! Buy Your Own Museum!

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Summer Sale! Buy Your Own Museum!

July 10, 2008

Museum entrance. It’s not often that we have a chance to buy pieces of a beloved roadside attraction. It’s rarer still that we have the opportunity to buy not only the attraction itself, but the entire town that surrounded it.

That’s the case, however, with the Million Dollar Museum and its accompanying family-owned mini-town, White’s City, New Mexico. It’s all for sale starting July 14. Some functionary for the superrich will probably swoop in and buy the post office (Who wouldn’t want their own zip code?). But 300,000 items from the museum are up for grabs as well, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try for some.

Wall of fiddles. We downloaded the auction catalog to see if there were treasures that we needed to preserve, as we did with Max Nordeen’s petrified leech. The museum’s collection of busted, dusty adding machines and typewriters is listed, as is its room full of steer horns.

We saw intriguing items such as a bronze statue of a Woolly Mammoth being attacked by lions, a 108-piece barbed wire collection, and a surprising number of bear traps. But we didn’t see any of the Museum’s two-headed animal freaks, or its human skulls and mummies, or the buck naked lady painting above the bar in the Velvet Garter saloon, or its one-of-a kind alien baby.

Detail from an intricate miniature at the Million Dollar Museum.

An article in the Dallas Morning News reports that the “younger generation” of the White family “has chosen to pursue other interests,” which is why everything’s being sold. Or almost everything. Perhaps they’re keeping all the really good stuff for themselves (with the intent of putting it back on display, we hope).

Or, as a Roadside tipster reported, perhaps the bones and freaks have already been carted away by the FBI for some super-secret purpose.

Sections: Attraction News, Closing