Priceless Coin Collection Found In College Library!

The Lockwood family should at least be allowed to express an opinion as to how the coins should be kept by the library, or it's successors.
That was the donor's intention. The implication is that they were not to be sold.

I can well imagine what many may say:
"Just imagine what we would be able to do with the money we would get from the sale of these!"
To simply sell them seems to me to be no more than commercial selfishness.

They should never be sold at any time in the future, unless that was at least implied in the original deed of gift.
Trouble is that such documents cannot be found, and commercial selfishness sets in, anyway.

We would all be better off if they all could be kept on secure public display, in a museum environment.

The museums of the world have held coin collections for centuries. There's a bit of archival technological expertise developed over that time, and I think they can be trusted to appropriately preserve the holding.

many of the coins (including proofs) in the NNC were polished by past curators at the Smithsonian.

Also many museums have also disposed of part or all of their coin collections.

As for the donation of this collection to the library, if the coins were an indefinite loan then they can't sell them. If they were a GIFT, then they are the property of the Library and they can do with them what they want.

Yeah, unfortunately in the past polishing was considered state-of-the-art curation.