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Design

This Museum Fits in the Palm of Your Hand

Carry around billion year old specimens in your pocket.
All images courtesy of Mini Museum

Thought your kinetic ball bearing desk toy was pretty impressive? Sorry bud, but it’s got nothing on pieces of a 4.5 billion year old asteroid belt, woolly mammoth meat, dinosaur skin and medieval chain mail. The Mini Museum is a portable curiosities collection containing 26 rare specimens encased in an acrylic block, which you can display on your desk or carry around in your pocket.

Hans Fex is the mastermind behind Mini Museum. He’s been collecting rare objects and artefacts ever since his dad, a laboratory chief and scientific director, gave him some specimens in the late ‘70s. It’s been his lifelong dream to share his hobby with the world, so for Mini Museum he has curated objects that span billions of years on earth (and outer space) from his own archive. Along with asteroid belt pieces, woolly mammoth meat, dinosaur skin and medieval chain mail, in the Mini Museum you will find portions of: 28.5 million year old Libyan desert glass; Stegosaurus dorsal plate; shipwrecked pieces of eight; a neanderthal hand axe; ancient ceramics; a 12th Century BCE bronze age dagger; petrified lightning; airship remnants from the 1937 Hindenburg disaster; bits from the world’s first computer; lava from Mt. Fuji; and other tiny treasures.

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Every specimen included in Mini Museum is authentic, with Fex having acquired them from scientists, researchers, meteorite hunters, collectors, dealers, private land owners, auctions and even from family heirlooms. A guide comes with each Mini Museum to explain the stories behind the specimens, which have been carefully hand laid into museum-grade lucite and labelled. After a sold-out and highly successful release of Mini Museum number one last year, Fex has decided to make the second edition available exclusively on Kickstarter, where he has so far raised more than $933,000 (his goal was $160,000) to put it into production.

Check out the video below to find out more about the specimens included in Mini Museum's second edition:

Find out more about Mini Museum here, and purchase your own palm-sized piece of history on Kickstarter.

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