None of us live forever, and as more people I've known have passed away, including some collectors formerly on this site, I've become more aware of my own mortality and a need to draw up a will. Generally, when someone dies, it can be quite a burden for the executor to go through an extensive collection of odds and ends if the deceased was a collector of something. Too often, a collection is auctioned off as a whole or even scrapped. Selling items individually on eBay is a burden if one doesn't have the time & interest for it. Light bulbs and old fixtures might not even be considered "collectables" and either kept with the house when it's sold, or thrown away.

In today's world of LED, our lighting collections are most valuable to and cherished by other lighting enthusiasts, and we would know what a shame it would be to have rare lamps and streetlights scrapped. Some of the things in our collections are practically unobtainable anywhere now. So it seems wise, in my opinion, to appoint someone specifically to handle lighting items in a collector's estate, then give specific instructions on what to do with these items (i.e. this person may have first choice for items themselves, then must list the remaining items on L-G for dissemination, either for L-G members first come, first serve to pick them up, or agreeing to ship items individually to other members, with those members just paying the cost of shipping). This is kind of what I have in mind for my own lighting items. In some cases one may desire to sell or auction items rather than give them away, with the proceeds going to benefit a surviving family member or charity.

Any thoughts, or experience from someone who has been through dealing with the collection of a deceased person?

This was case With Jfrog collection.   It took 3 LG member to go though all of Jfrog lighting estate.  And I was able to pass some of stuff to other collectors over the years.   It best to appoint some one local and then make arrangements.  Some of rarest item u can put collector name on it.  And put it in the will that person have to claim it. 

None of us live forever, and as more people I've known have passed away, including some collectors formerly on this site, I've become more aware of my own mortality and a need to draw up a will. Generally, when someone dies, it can be quite a burden for the executor to go through an extensive collection of odds and ends if the deceased was a collector of something. Too often, a collection is auctioned off as a whole or even scrapped. Selling items individually on eBay is a burden if one doesn't have the time & interest for it. Light bulbs and old fixtures might not even be considered "collectables" and either kept with the house when it's sold, or thrown away.

In today's world of LED, our lighting collections are most valuable to and cherished by other lighting enthusiasts, and we would know what a shame it would be to have rare lamps and streetlights scrapped. Some of the things in our collections are practically unobtainable anywhere now. So it seems wise, in my opinion, to appoint someone specifically to handle lighting items in a collector's estate, then give specific instructions on what to do with these items (i.e. this person may have first choice for items themselves, then must list the remaining items on L-G for dissemination, either for L-G members first come, first serve to pick them up, or agreeing to ship items individually to other members, with those members just paying the cost of shipping). This is kind of what I have in mind for my own lighting items. In some cases one may desire to sell or auction items rather than give them away, with the proceeds going to benefit a surviving family member or charity.

Any thoughts, or experience from someone who has been through dealing with the collection of a deceased person?

I collect traffic signals, vintage Christmas lamps/sets and lamps.

I told my wife not to bin everything, and I printed up some descriptions, possible values, and where to post for sale, that I tuck away with most of my collectibles. I also gave pretty good eBay-type listing descriptions to attract the attention of serious collectors. I thought about doing digital copies, but everything is printed on paper and tucked away with/inside each item, that way, if the item survives, the notes are right there, not hidden in some folder on a HDD that may no longer work.

99.99% of people would just bin our stuff, then go on Amazon and order something cheap on Prime then post a TikTok while all dolled up about something meaningless. The world absolutely doesn't care any more.

And, we might follow in the footsteps of Elvis collectors. Elvis memorabilia used to be super hot, until about 5+ years ago. The people who would pay those prices began dying off in droves, and now Elvis stuff is not expensive anymore. A lot of our collections are due to our earliest memories and fascinations with something that newer generations weren't born into. So, my stuff may still get binned, if I'm lucky to live long enough, there may be no one left to care.

I look at these items as someone, who has certainly passed, cared enough to provide them to the world. We are just stewards of these items. My wife and kid don't care, but they agreed to pass them on to the "right" people, using my notes to guide them.

 My family has all told me to find homes for all of my stuff BEFORE I pass or it's ALL going in the dumpster !  They won't even bother with an estate sale or yard sale ! Just hire a clean out crew to pitch everything . 

My stuff will probably go to the dumpster after I’m finished.

Its a very good question.  I think waiting until the last minute is not a good solution - if you are lucky enough to know when that time is approaching.

When I was much younger I inherited lamps from older collectors who had already begun to plan in their 60s/70s/80s years.  At such age it seems that many of the more serious collectors’ interests began to drift more towards knowledge than actual artefacts - and they increased the practicality of their collections by gradually downsizing over a period of many years.  For instance, rather than keeping multiple wattages or brands of a particular lamp, select just one to represent a particular design and let the rest go.

By starting to sell off lamps during retirement it provided a most welcome boost to their pensions, and in return they could see that their items were going to good homes.  By the end there may have been only a few dozen or a hundred lamps left, a much more manageable situation for the executors to then distribute among a few inheritors.

The one thing I definitely do not want to see happen with my collection is for anything to go into the hands of any public museum.  Those places are increasingly becoming nothing more than businesses, whose employees are less and less experienced and interested over time, and whose artefacts are typically locked away in storage where nobody can see or appreciate them.  On the rare occasions they are displayed, the descriptions are often totally inaccurate.  You can’t expect someone who is paid to be a curator for a few hours a day to be as interested or experienced as someone who has a lifelong interest in the subject.  So I would rather see my lamps distributed among the members of this site who I know will understand and appreciate them, show them to other interested collectors who may happen to visit, or discuss them in the galleries and forums here.  Most important for me is that such artefacts do not disappear into a black hole but remain accessible and in circulation.

We should put together a list of people who have volunteered to help out with facilitating the clearing out of lighting estates and their contact information. The only problem is you don't know if someone has passed on, or the person's family members might not be willing to contact someone.

Another idea that also works is for us collectors to build dedicated lighting museums and have us collectors be the curators where we can accurately share our knowledge and educate others on the true history of lighting and have our lamp, ballast, and fixture collections on display for the public to see and we can pass down our knowledge to future generations of lighting collectors that can function as curators in preparation for us collectors going EOL.

In addition, another thing to consider when designing a dedicated lighting museum is that when considering exhibits that consist of “living lighting” installations (installations of historically significant light fixtures that use the lamps that were originally designed for them such as preheat fluorescent tube fixtures with REAL fluorescent tubes, ballasts, and starters) would need to be turned on very occasionally like once per year on only one day for a few hours at the most because lamps have a finite life and using the discontinued lamps too frequently would eventually cause working lamp specimens to burn out of existence and then the “living lighting” installation would cease to be authentic and future generations of people would have NO idea of what lighting used to look like in bygone eras. If you look at what happened to the Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapor lamps, carbon arc lamps used for street lighting applications, and Nernst lamps, people did not care about stocking up on enough lamps, ballasts and fixtures to be able to preserve those lamps and fixtures designed for them in the first place. As a result, almost nobody has an idea of what it is like to see a Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapor lamp or a carbon arc lamp used for street lighting applications in action. In the exhibits that contain “living lighting” installations, modern fixtures would have to be used most of the time so that historical lamps  can be preserved in working condition for as long as possible so that future generations can appreciate lighting of the past for as long as possible.

If you see this thread below, it describes what eventuallyhappens if certain light sources are not cared for and appreciated by many people and thrown away:

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=9&pid=86985

This will mean that it will eventually become progressively more rare to find a long-discontinued lamp in new old stock and eventually very rare to find in working condition as people continue to throw away obsolete lamps and not care about them instead of preserving them in museums.

Yeah, this is one thing I've though about, and have concluded that it's best to just not think about it. I don't have kids and won't have kids and neither will my sister who I live with, so unless a kid of a cousin or something wants the house, likely the house and it's contents will go to some charity who will just discard all my souvenirs and scrapbooks and photos and try to sell anything they think has value. My Department 56 stuff it's really easy to look up the value of it, but say my yellow Dichro-Color flood or new in package Halarc lamp are going to look just like any other light bulb worth at most a dollar to most people. With traffic signals I also have some extremely rare stuff that doesn't look especially notable.

As a lot of you know I have probably the largest collection of low pressure sodium fixtures, that would appear as scrap metal to most people. It's still my intent to rehome them, but COVID got in the way, then I got involved in a legal dispute between relatives over an estate that resulted in me needing to spend extensive time in North Carolina. Finally a tree fell on and destroyed a large part of my deck, (missing the lights by a few feet), so I had to deal with making space in the garage for them and rebuilding the deck and all the dealing with contractors and insurance. I did sell a couple to Lighting Gallery members that approached me including one that survived being shipped. I have another sale pending so this works out I'll feel more comfortable shipping them and now that they're in the garage I'll be more inclined to deal with them. I was a lot more excited about rescuing them then reselling them and half the year they were buried under snow and the other half of the year it was nice so I was more inclined to do other stuff.

Not sure what we'll do with our stuff. We've a lot of duplicates, so we'll definitely try and sell or trade some of those, but we've got to sort through them first..! What to do with what's left, I don't know. We've thought of a museum for some of the rarer stuff, but after the comments from James we're not so sure any more 

All we can say at the moment is be nice to us and we might think of you in our wills 

Ria & Sammi