A Facebook update says that the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum has permanently closed due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
For tabletop fans tracking the progress and behaviour of the museum’s social media and founders, the circumstances leading to the closure may have been entirely foreseen. Last year, it was put on the market for $5 million, a rise from its real estate value of around $300,000.
The museum, which is in the building that TSR once used, still has the domain name TSRMuseum and was set up by Justin LaNasa and curator Jeff Leason. Leason had worked at (original) TSR.
LaNasa bought the trademark TSR after it lapsed, agreeing at the time that he was unaware of any other company with which the brand could be confused. He then tried to Wizards of the Coast for embarrassing the community and confusing the brands by being too similar to TSR. A crowdfunder was started to raise money from gamers, but that initial court action was filed incorrectly, and cutting a long story short, Wizards fought back. Hard.
While the legal battle was raging and after that, the various social media accounts of those involved posted attacks on people, groups, minorities, and concepts and spread all sorts of ‘interesting theories’. These accounts were claimed to have been hacked or stolen, and the founders fell out and split up.
In the Facebook post announcing the news, some people who donated pieces of history, such as Robert Wadsworth, one of the original players, to the museum asked what would happen to their contributions. The DHSM has said these will be transferred to the Geneva Lake Museum or returned to the donors.
The museum was located at 723 Williams St. in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the United States.
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