[Mithalwen]

I always think that the mathom house was a bit like the Pitt RIvers museum in Oxford - which is more like the semi-organized box room of a well travelled great -uncle on a grand scale. Lots of interesting but fairly random and eccentric.

My guess is that no matter how outlandish shirelings found Bilbo's tales, they also had small children that needed amusing on wet days, therefore the possessors of curiosities probable found it eaier to put them in a publlic place than to have endless streams of people pestering them for a look..