Share the Love

The Postal Museum is expanding its collection of love letters and Valentine’s cards. If you own romantic correspondence and would like to offer it to The Postal Museum, here is what you need to do:

Lithographic Valentines postcard, (OB1995-162.8)

1. Think about the future

Once objects are transferred to the museum, they become our property. We care for our collection and conserve it for future generations to engage with. However, we know that objects, especially personal correspondence, can have a lot of sentimental value. Think about whether you want to keep objects within your family. It might be worth discussing this with your relatives.

2. Take a picture

The best way for us to assess an object’s relevance to the collection and make initial judgements about its condition is to look at a photograph. Send images to [email protected] and tell us how you own it and why it is important. Although we’d love to accept all offers of donation, we cannot due to the lack of space.

3. Legal requirements

If we decide to take your offer of donation further, we will send you a Transfer or Title form to fill in. This is the legal document transferring ownership of the object from you to The Postal Museum. You will need to describe how the object has changed hands over the years. This is called the object’s provenance. But don’t worry, it only takes a few minutes to fill them in.

It’s important to remember that we do not display everything we own.

4. Send the objects to The Postal Museum

Please don’t jump to this step, it’s the very last stage in the process. It’s essential that you follow steps 1, 2 and 3 first.

We can’t wait to see your treasures!

– The Postal Museum’s Curatorial Team