Mini Museum - Portable Curiosities Collection

It's not an oompa loompa, but a portable plaque of specimens ranging from a thread of circa 350 BC Egyptian mummy wrap to a sliver of T-Rex tooth is still rad enough for me to whine, "Mama! I want a Mini Museum! I want you to get me a Mini Museum right away!" And then once my mama buys me one I...What's that, Mama? The back of your hand? My face? But I--I was just kidding! I....

OK. Maybe me and my friend Cornelius can go halfsies on a Mini Museum.

Hans Fex has spent 35 years amassing the authentic specimens that comprise his pocket-sized journeys through history. But given the age of some of his inclusions, he befittingly points out that each handcrafted, individually numbered Mini Museum has really been billions of years in the making. Through specialists referred to him by museum curators, research scientists, and university historians, Fex has managed to acquire artifacts as ancient as 4-billion-year-old matter collected from carbonacious chondrites, as intriguing as a hunk of a palm tree from Antarctica, and as momentous as stones from the Berlin Wall.

Fex compiles his desktop exhibits by breaking each artifact down into nubs just bigger than visible to the naked eye. He then embeds the pieces in resin and arranges them chronologically for Mini Museum display. Museums come in 3 sizes: Small, with 11 unique specimens; Medium, with 22; and Large, with 33. As mentioned, collections begin with some of the universe's oldest known matter, bits of the carbonacious chondrite meteorites. From there they move on to strelly pool stromatolites, containing the earliest evidence of life on Earth, plus shards of dinosaur bones, teeth, and fossilized poo. Once the Mini Museum reaches the age of Homo Sapiens, we see mummy wraps, rocks from Mt. Everest, coal from the Titanic, even a hunk of the Apollo 11 command module Fex bought from Buzz Aldrin. Check out the complete list of Small, Medium, and Large Mini Museum inclusions in the table image above. For complete descriptions and larger photos of each, refer to the Mini Museum Kickstarter campaign page.

Mini Museums are available to Kickstarter backers through March 20, 2014. Given that Fex had a $38,000 funding goal and had raised nearly $725,000 at printing, money should not be an issue heading into production of these curiosities collections. But while Fex promises on the soil that spawned Dracula he's got plenty of wooly mammoth hair and Abe Lincoln house bricks to go around, those planning on purchasing a Mini Museum as a gift or for a particular occasion should keep in mind that Kickstarter projects funded at this magnitude often miss their anticipated delivery dates--in this case, Summer/Fall 2014.