Aw, my smiley face is gone? It's the first time I've ever made anything other than letters and characters appear in a title, so I was really proud of myself! :)
Today I have taken care of the question of charitable donations for tax purposes. I was driving home from shopping and saw an estate sale sign. I pulled in, and because the front room was crowded, I turned a corner into the first quiet room to look and found a table stacked with old playbills going back to the mid-1950s. I called work and described this collection. I was going to have to wait for someone to call me back, so executive decision and I bought them all (about 100 pounds of paper) for $35.
I can't just dump paper on Special Collections, so what I'll do is sort these playbills by size and year, and count them. I'll do a few searches on playbills on eBay to establish a general value (to list them at $1 each for X number of specific types). I have to write a letter saying I'm donating them and listing the categories at least, and I'll provide information about where I found them.
I went next door and spoke to the woman who had been her neighbor for 32 years and she had the son's business card. I just got off the phone with him. It turns out this woman's second husband (she was widowed twice) was a founding member of this popular theater in town.
I have the obituary and information for the family, and while I was clear that there are never any promises about things being processed at all, let alone promptly, I thought this tied in with things already going in the collection and that they will be glad to have these in our special collections, and if they have more of the same stuff they'd like to donate, they can do it in their mother's name, because I'm going to make sure her name is on the collection.
It's so hard to sell this stuff, but $35 was a pittance, yet I couldn't buy it to donate if it wasn't going for that pittance.
I also picked up a clump of the old heavier gauge wire tomato cages (you can never have too many of those!) and a kitchen scale for use here.
I'll start on these programs this weekend. It's a good time of year to do this - by the time it gets into the system at my university and they send an acknolwedgement, it will be near the end of the year. I can't take a deduction for a donation until I have the dated acknowledgement.