Late in the Year 2000, after shipping the bulk of his books and papers collections to George Mason University and to Arizona State University, Warfield tackled the project of a possible income tax deduction for the donations.

Dr. Steve Johnson does audiovisual appraising. He did the Nixon library collection. John contacted him after looking up appraisers on the web. Dr. Johnson is a member of Appraisers Association of America, American Society of Appraisers NQ675700, International Society of Appraisers NQ3891. He has performed "Certified, Independent Research & Financial Appraisal of All Audiovisual Recorded Media for Any Purpose & Function Since 1976." Among other clients, he did appraisal of the Nixon library tapes.

John sent him a compact disk titled "Warfield Writings 2000," on Nov. 19, 2000, with a suggestion he look at the Powerpoint video titled: "Managing the Unmanageable" Later, after some correspondence, John sent him five videos to review, along with a detailed listing of all of the videos. Correspondence and phone calls from Mr. Johnson followed and he convinced John that the stuff would be worth appraising. John engaged him to do an appraisal. A price of $4000 was agreed on for his services, half payable in advance and the rest upon completion of the work.

In mid-February 2001 we received APPRAISAL OF JOHN N. WARFIELD MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVES, by Dr. Steve Johnson. In this 59 page spiral bound manual dated Feb 15, 2001 Dr. Johnson gives his estimate of the value of the videos at over a million dollars.* The estimate is reinforced by Mr. Johnson's previous experience with videotapes and appraisals, and seems reliable.

We are stunned. Also we can't possibly get full deduction on income tax, because the total of deductions is limited to a certain percentage of our annual income. JOHN'S INCOME IS TOO LOW TO DEDUCT A MILLION DOLLAR DONATION TO A LIBRARY. John can deduct a part of the MILLION, but not all. However, according to the tax law, he can continue deductions for the million during the next 3 or 4 years, or is it 5 or 6 years? Even then, after several years, he still would not be able to deduct the full appraised value.

Dr. Johnson sent four copies of his appraisal volume as part of his appraisal service. The Appraisal manuscript is COPYRIGHTED BY DR. JOHNSON, and is not the property of Warfield. John purchased only the copies which he got. NO PHOTOCOPYING OF THE VOLUME IS PERMITTED, due to Dr. Johnson's copyright of the material. However John did send two of these copies out to Arizona Univ library and to GMU library for their examination, with the request that they DO NOT MAKE PHOTOCOPIES AND THAT THEY RETURN THE VOLUMES TO WARFIELD. Both university libraries eventually returned the volumes to John, and we presume that neither of them infringed on Dr. Johnson's copyright by making a photocopy. John also sent one copy to the Internal Revenue Service, and one copy to the State of Virginia Tax division along with his year 2000 tax returns containing requests for tax deduction. Believe it or not, the IRS and also the Commonwealth of Virginia credited us with the full request and we got a tax refund for that year, and should continue to do so for coming years up the 5 or 6 year time limit.

The Appraisal volume which was sent to the IRS was eventually returned to Warfield, but the one we sent to the state of Virginia was never sent back to us, is presumably in some filing cabinet in Richmond, Virginia til the end of time. So now we have THREE COPIES OF THE APPRAISAL. John is saving one on a shelf in his office, and Rose has collected the other two copies and placed them in the GARAGE FILING CABINET WITH JOHN'S OTHER PAPERS, FILED UNDER THE YEAR 2001.. Inside the file cabinet drawer, both copies of the Appraisal manuscript are wrapped in plastic to preserve against moisture damage. (R.w. circa 2001)

*The unique factor about this donation, according to the appraiser, was the fact that it was an audio-visual collection covering a consecutive period of time, 20 years, devoted to one central topic, the development of a new method of dealing with complexity. John’s being well-known helped the appraisal without a doubt, but John wasn’t nearly as well-known as a jillion other college professors, even in his own professional field. It was the continuum, and the fact that it was audio-visual, which made the collection unique and therefore valuable. John just happened to be working on the same thing for 40 years, 20 of which somehow got recorded audio-visually and the materials somehow got saved. Nobody else did anything like that with videos, on any subject like that, for that long a period of time, something the appraiser researched and found out.

Since moving to Arkansas, I have kept Appraisal Report is in a 3-ring notebinder inside a box in tenant storeroom bin Number 157 at Butterfield Trail Village, First Floor South. The box is labeled: FLORIDA FINANCIALS, 2000 - 2005. The appraisal is there because of the Federal income tax implications re the deductions John took for 5 or 6 years, ending in 2006. I recently found two more copies in boxes as I was unpacking and these two copies are in tenant storeroom FLORIDA FINANCIALS 2000-2005 also. I will donate one copy to George Mason University library in the future, if they want it. Documents such as scanned copies of correspondence between John and the appraisers are on Rose's home computer, in file folder: "APPRAISAL of Warfield donations to GMU." (R.w. 5/15/2012)

P.S. George Mason University did desire a copy, when Rose offered in 2013. It was shipped in April, 2013 in a boxed collection itemized in Dell computer filename <Packing list, items shipped to GMU Apr 10th2013> with the following notation: Johnson, Steve, “Appraisal of John N. Warfield Moving Image Archives” Behavioral Images Incorporated, February 15, 2001. 59 pages. Spiral bound report.(R.w. July 7, 2013.)