Steve,
I feel your pain. Society doesn't have much patience for 'champions' if they get in the way of it's insatiable needs. For example, if the word got out that I stood in the way of more than 10,000 lbs. of aluminum in the way of microwave dish antennas being sold as scrap from the Algonquin Radio Observatory a few years ago and saved the dishes for re-application in science instead of being turned into beer cans, I'd probably have a crowd of angry Canadian beer drinkers on my case!
If this was the store owner that had assembled the collection, you'd think he would have been bright enough to realize it was precious and irreplaceable. Scrap aluminum. Now you won't be able to crack a cold one without crying.
