Pieces of history are up for grabs.

The Chapel Hill Museum began selling its contents Saturday to help cover the last costs related to its closing, which the museum’s Executive Board of Trustees announced in June. The sale will continue next Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“We’ve been teetering for several years,” said the museum’s treasurer Stephen Rich. “We want to dispose of everything we still own to retire what little debts we still have left.”

Items considered by the staff to be artifacts, like pieces from the James Taylor exhibit, will be available at a sale in September.

Basic memorabilia like envelopes and shelves are for sale, but some exhibits are also available, like the “Walk Down Franklin Street” exhibit. Three of its panels will still be seen by the public in Top of the Hill’s new Great Room.

Other historic items are also up for the taking. The going rate for the first car ever sold on Franklin Street is around $20,000.

Most of the museum’s pottery will return to Seagrove, N.C., and some of it will go on display at UNC Hospitals, Rich said.

“There are so many unique things here,” he said.

Elaine Jerome visited the museum several times while it was open, and she visited the yard sale looking for easels. She left with a print for her granddaughter.

“I thought it was a wonderful asset to the community. It offered so much,” she said. “It’s as if every day in this modern world, we’re losing beautiful old things.”

After the museum failed to receive requested funding from the town, it was forced to close its doors. The museum’s allocated funding of $34,250, less than 1 percent of the town’s annual budget, was not enough for upkeep and utilities.

“We did not get monetary support from the town all these years,” said museum trustee Beth Isenhoure. “We operated on a shoestring.”

The museum tentatively plans to return the building to the town on Oct. 10. At that time, museum administrators will stop paying any maintenance or utilities.

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