The Colfax Railroad Museum in Colfax WI will be on the March 20th episode of the American Pickers show. We spent three years working on bringing them to the Museum. They filmed in July of 2023. We are currently working on two major grants with matching requirements and the funds we received will go toward those efforts. We had addressed our collection and determined that it was time to reduce excess items. All items sold were replaced with similar items in storage. This is shaping up to be a major event with a local premier at the Colfax Whitetail Golf Course clubhouse and a once in a lifetime promotion for the Museum in the region.

I am curious why not sell directly sell the items in storage than “picking “ exhibited items? While your team likely worked with the filming crew on which items had previously been deaccessed, the reality TV production creates a bad image of individuals going through an exhibit and selecting artifacts to be purchased. Museums are neither antique dealers nor prop shops.

I hope the publicity helps the museum, and plan to tune in today. At least their collection wasn't featured on Hoarders....

Sammy, hoarders is waiting for my bookshelves.

I just watched American Pickers that featured the Colfax Museum. It was a very interesting collection and I wish them well as it appears they are out in the middle of no where. I would suggest that they contact a major auction house to sell off duplicate items to fund the new structure to house the equipment. This is why I tell collectors that they are better off to sell off their collections to others and then make financial donations to the museum of their choice. I could see that they will have an uphill battle out there to preserve their best items. The museums of today can only handle so much "stuff."

I visited there a number of years ago, before that I thought that nickel plated Pullman lanterns were rare, they must have had fifty of them. They have been collecting for a long time.

Just to answer a few of the questions posted, the original plan for the pick was all the nonrailroad items we had received with railroad collections and then some of the surplus items from completed restoration projects. As it turned out, the filming slipped two weeks and our chairman had to come up from Milwaukee to do the show since our family trip by Amtrak to the DC and Virginia historic sites that period had already been paid for. Whne Mike arrived for filming, they decided to strictly focus on railroad items. When he asked about the uniform, that's when I was called. It turned out we had a better version in storage so that's why we sold the one displayed item.

Our ultimate goal from this 3-year process was to get our Museum publicized nation-wide and based on the phone calls already since the show that was accomplished. We could never have afforded this broad of exposure on our budget.

The excess nonrailroad items went to auction shortly after the pick was filmed.