# The Museum in the Seller's Column
> Eight records in this archive carry a museum or a state as the seller. The Bodleian sold its First Folio as a duplicate and paid 3,000 pounds to get it back. The British Museum sold 29 Benin plaques as duplicates. A forger invented a museum sale to launder a tablet.
> The Study - 2026-09-17
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-museum-in-the-sellers-column/
## Key points
- Eight records in this archive have a museum, a library or a state in the seller's column of the provenance. The event is rare in the chains, at eight of about 1,800 links, and it is the link a later holder is most likely to regret, to invent, or to be unable to document.
- The Bodleian sold its First Folio in a batch of superfluous books priced at 24 pounds around 1664, and bought the same copy back for 3,000 pounds in 1906 with more than 80 subscribers, bidding against Henry Clay Folger. The library's own blog says the date of the deaccession is not clear.
- The British Museum deaccessioned 29 Benin plaques in 1950 and 1951 as duplicates, an understanding the museum now states was incorrect. Two of the plaques it passed to Nigeria later left Lagos without being deaccessioned by anyone and reached the Metropolitan Museum through a New York dealer.
- The Soviet state is the seller in three records. The British Museum paid 100,000 pounds for the Codex Sinaiticus by cheque to Arcos Ltd, the Soviet trading company, in December 1933. The Met bought van Eyck's diptych out of the Hermitage through Knoedler the same year. Goudstikker bought the Cranach panels at a 1931 Berlin auction billed as the Stroganoff Collection, which the Ninth Circuit found the Stroganoffs may never have owned.
- A museum sale is also the link forgers reach for. The False Provenance Letter for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet claimed it had been deaccessioned from a small, unnamed museum and sold in a 1981 lot described as a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments.
## A sale by a museum is the rarest ordinary link
## The Bodleian sold its First Folio as a duplicate and paid to get it back
## The British Museum sold 29 Benin plaques on the same reasoning
## The state as seller: three Soviet sales in one archive
## The egg the Soviet state listed for sale and nobody recorded selling
## A museum sells one collection to buy another
## The museum sale that was invented
## What the seller's column can and cannot prove
## How to check a museum sale
A museum in the seller's column is a claim about paperwork that the reader almost never sees. In this archive the line covers a library that sold a book for a share of 24 pounds and bought it back for 3,000, a museum that sold 29 objects as duplicates and now says they were not, a state that sold under a collector's name, a valuation for sale that no sale ever followed, and a deaccession that existed only in a forger's letter. Read the register, read the object, and treat the words sold by the museum as the beginning of a check rather than the end of one.
## Questions
**Why did the Bodleian Library sell its First Folio?**
Because the Third Folio of 1663 to 1664 had arrived with seven extra plays and the library judged it the more complete text. The benefaction register records the Oxford bookseller Richard Davis paying 24 pounds for a lot of superfluous library books that included the First Folio. The library bought the same copy back in 1906 for 3,000 pounds raised by public subscription.
**Did the British Museum sell any of the Benin Bronzes?**
Yes. In 1950 and 1951 it deaccessioned 29 plaques it understood to be duplicates. Twenty-five went to the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, one was sold to the Gold Coast government in 1954 and eight went to dealers and collectors between 1952 and 1972. The museum's own page now states the duplicate finding was incorrect.
**How much did the British Museum pay the Soviet government for the Codex Sinaiticus?**
100,000 pounds, paid by cheque to Arcos Ltd, the Soviet trading company, in December 1933. The Treasury provided 93,000 pounds on condition that a public appeal was run and the museum found 7,000 pounds itself. The codex reached London on 26 December 1933.
**How did the Metropolitan Museum pay for the Euphronios krater?**
By selling the Durkee and Ward collections of about 11,000 coins and medals through Sotheby's, which advanced 1.5 million dollars and ultimately produced close to 2.3 million. The museum paid one million dollars for the krater in 1972 and title passed to Italy in 2006.
**What was the False Provenance Letter for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet?**
A document a dealer produced when buyers asked for a history, claiming the tablet had been deaccessioned from a small unnamed museum and sold in Lot 1503 of a 1981 Butterfield and Butterfield auction described as a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments. The federal forfeiture complaint names it as fabricated. The tablet was forfeited in July 2021 and returned to Iraq.
**Is a museum's sale a reliable provenance link?**
It is reliable only where the institution's own register can be read. Of eight institutional sales in this archive, two have a price on record, one was invented outright and three were later regretted or reversed by the seller. Check the register and the object's physical evidence, not the line in the catalogue.
## Sources
- [1] Bodleian Libraries, The Bodleian's original First Folio of Shakespeare, The Conveyor, 11 September 2012. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the 1623 arrival and Oxford binding, the unclear date of deaccession, G. M. R. Turbutt in 1905, the Binders Book record of Wildgoose, Falconer Madan's research and E. W. B. Nicholson's 1906 fundraising against Henry Clay Folger.
- [2] The British Museum, Benin Bronzes, Contested objects from the collection. Read in full 17 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 403 on the plain fetch. Source for the 1950 and 1951 deaccession of 29 plaques as duplicates, the museum's statement that further research has shown this to be incorrect, the 25 to Nigeria, the one to the Gold Coast in 1954 and the eight to dealers and collectors between 1952 and 1972.
- [3] Codex Sinaiticus Project, History of the Codex, section on the 1933 purchase. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for Maggs Brothers, the 93,000 pounds from the Civil Contingencies Fund, the museum's 7,000 pounds, the cheque to Arcos Ltd, delivery on 26 December 1933 and the appeal total of 46,500 pounds by May 1934.
- [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Jan van Eyck, The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment, 33.92ab, provenance tab. Read 17 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 429 on the plain fetch. Source for the line Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (1917/18-1933); Knoedler, New York, 1933; sold to The Met.
- [5] United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, No. 16-56308, opinion filed 30 July 2018. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the 1931 Berlin auction called the Stroganoff Collection, the district court's finding that the Stroganoff family never owned the panels, the 1971 sale for 800,000 dollars and the act of state holding.
- [6] Wartski, London, The Lost Third Imperial Easter Egg. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for Kremlin Armoury Article 1548, the 1922 transfer to the plenipotentiary of the Council of People's Commissars, the May 1924 Soviet valuation of eighteen eggs to be sold held by Goznak, the Parke-Bernet sale of 7 March 1964 at 2,450 dollars and the later purchase at about 14,000 dollars.
- [7] Neil Brodie, Euphronios (Sarpedon) Krater, Trafficking Culture encyclopedia, University of Glasgow. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the one million dollar price, the sale of the Durkee and Ward collections of 11,000 coins and medals through Sotheby's, the 1.5 million dollar advance and the receipt of nearly 2.3 million, citing Hoving.
- [8] Nicholas M. O'Donnell and colleagues, Problems of Provenance: The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, The National Law Review. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the forfeiture complaint, the seizure from the Museum of the Bible in September 2019, the 2014 purchase by Hobby Lobby and the False Provenance Letter's claim of a deaccession from an unidentified small museum and Lot 1503 of a 1981 Butterfield and Butterfield sale described as a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments.
- [9] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release, 9 June 2021, on the return of two Benin plaques and an Ife head to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria. Cited from the archive's Benin Bronzes record for the 2021 deaccession and the Perls gift of 1991.