How to apply money?

Having a quick flick through, you've guessed it, the BBC News front page, I noticed an article saying the Coleridge Collar is coming up for sale:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7653348.stm

Knowing my obsession with history you won't be surprised to learn I read it with some interest - it seems this article is going to auctioned early next month, the first time it has ever come up for sale.

So what? I can hear you all shout. Well, firstly, this is quite a unique piece - it's the only surviving entire livery collar from the Tudor period. Henry VIII only had about 20 or so of them made, for his special pals, and all the rest have either been broken up or their eventual demise has been lost in the centuries between then and now. Even the, regretfully usually fairly philistine, BBC have described it as "one of the most important surviving relics of the Tudor age", and if it's managed to penetrate their dumbed-down cerebral corteses it MUST be fairly significant. Secondly, the workmanship is quite extraordinary - those readers who know me beyond the pages of this blog and are therefore familiar with the seriousness with which I approach my own 'craft' activities, and those of others, therefore won't be surprised to discover I'm fascinated by the design and skill required to make such a piece. Lastly, and again those who know me and my avid reading of detective novels will not find this out of character, the collar was only discovered recently, lurking in the house of the poet Samuel Coleridge Taylor. So it's really like a bit of long-hidden treasure - an notion which is appealing to my kiddie 'let's find a secret' side.

What is bugging me is WHY for pity's sake is an item of this national importance going up for sale in a public auction house? SURELY, even in this credit-crunched environment somebody in charge of one of our collections (most appropriately the V&A I would suggest) must have noticed this item pop out of obscurity and recognise it really should be on public display? NO mention of that in the BBC article.

My hope is that the collar WILL indeed be purchased for the nation, or at least some enlightened public figure will dip in their own pocket to secure it. After all, if the ghastly J K Rowling can manage to stump up £1m for the Labour party - surely its not unreasonable to ask for a third of that amount to be used to to secure something of far, far more value to our cultural and historical life than a bunch of over-exposed self-publicising third-rate politicians?