[lholden]

My mom lived in a historical house when she was a kid in the 60s. Since then, the house has become a museum. There are a lot of "artifacts" on display that "came from the 1800s" that are actually just toys my moms brothers made. My mom got a good laugh about it when she took me to visit the place.

I'm sure these finds must have dated in some way to verify the authenticity, but I always think back to seeing my uncles toys on display as if they were historical artifacts when I see stuff like this.

[CalRobert]

A lot of these historical house “museums” are a pleasant diversion for tourists more than anything else. Note how they are all haunted - ghost tours are pretty easy money

[elric]

I have never come across a house museum that claims to be haunted. Must be a cultural thing that doesn't exist in Belgium. Possibly because loads of things are ancient here anyway, no need to embellish with more nonsense I guess.

[whimsicalism]

yes, probably an american thing. i am very much not a fan of these “ghost tours”

[nmridul]

>> sure these finds must have dated in some way to verify the authenticity ....

What happens if the uncle used very old wood or cloth to make the toys. Will the dating technique be able to find the actual age ?

[curiouscavalier]

Dating is done with more than just material analysis. Evidence of tools used to make the toy, techniques for things like joins and stitching, etc. can all be indicative of methods that can give at least a lower bound. How applicable method differentiation is to this specific case obviously depends on a number of things.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

Has your mom got in touch with the museum to tell them that, so they can improve? If not why not?

[lholden]

I honestly don't know. I imagine not.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

It’s not their mothers responsibility to correct their incompetence, or (imo) more likely negligence and information falsification.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

A) I didn't say it was their responsibility

B) I don't wanna assume malice where incompetence will do

[hsbauauvhabzb]

If you walked into a old house and found a random toy, would you automatically assume the toy is as old as the house?

[bdjsiqoocwk]

If you saw something broken that's not your responsibility would you fix it?

I know the answer in your case, but believe me that a lot of people would.

[EnigmaFlare]

With his rhetorical question, he's saying it must be malice because no museum operator would be that incompetent. They're actively making a false claim to their customers. They could have just not said anything about the age of the toys since they know they didn't verify it. I think you can see this must be the case since you didn't answer his question.

In my country, if a business makes a factual claim about its products, it has to have already verified the correctness of it to some reasonable level and have the documentation so show that. There's no room for this "oh, I just assumed it was true because I'm incompetent" excuse.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

> If you saw something broken that's not your responsibility would you fix it?

If it were a genuine mistake and not fraudulent, yes.

> I know the answer in your case, but believe me that a lot of people would.

Weren’t you just talking about not assuming malice?

[have_faith]

Maybe they just made a mistake.