Rota Cave Museum for Sale $50M

The Rota Cave Museum, which is dated by archeologists to be roughly 11 million years old through a clamshell imprint inside, is up for sale and the price is $50 million.

Owners Matias and Mercedes Taisacan said they’re selling the precious family heirloom now—the former inherited it from his father—because life’s too short and nobody should hold on to material things.

“I'm selling, and to tell you the truth, I'm selling everything—the land, the house, the art gallery, the cave, the artifacts, all the monetary [things] that I'm holding now. I got almost 150 lbs of wheat pennies...If they want, they can come and lay it flat. I'll sign the title of the land. It's yours. I'll move up, you know, even the upstairs [is for sale]. If they can give me, let's say $50 million? That will satisfy me... I got three kids, so, you know,” said Matias in a recent interview with Marianas Press.

The soon-to-be 74-year-old Rota resident said if someone agrees to his $50-million asking price, he will share the proceeds to his family. The businesses has been closed for two years.

The only fly in the ointment is that the $50-million ask is minus an appraiser and Matias said it’s something he can’t afford right now since the last time they asked that kind of service costs $100 an hour.

And what will the $50-million purchase buy. For starters, the Rota Cave Museum is home to the Taisacans’ expansive coin collection that dates back from the early 1900s.

“We finished all the way to 1960 something, and I have some gold coins, silver coins, silver dollar, I got, you know, Eisenhower [dollars], I'm selling everything. But I don't know how true that is in the website, it says, don't show your 1943 steel penny, they're worth $5 million, I don't know. So, the coins are from until when, 1913, 1909, all the way to down this one here,” as he shows a water bottle that contains several 1958 coins.

It also holds thousands of artifacts from the ancient Chamorro era, with a few items from the Spanish period to many Japanese and American pieces mostly from the Second World War, including different types of coffee mugs, all kinds of bowls and plates, and even some items from before World War II like Chinese plates.

One of the more intriguing items in the Taisacans’ collection are their fishing floaters. Matias said these orbs of different hues and sizes are actually expensive with one collector from upstate New York willing to fork out $3,000 for a medium-sized one and they have dozens of these inside the museum.

“This property belongs to my dad. So, I inherit it, and all the artifacts that I accumulate, that I collect from local people,” said Matias, adding that his museum is the only private museum on Rota and even predates the NMI Museum of History and Culture on Saipan.

Used as a typhoon shelter when Matias was still young and a bomb shelter by Chamorros and Japanese during the war, the Rota Cave Museum was opened in 1990 not long after Matias retired from the aforementioned CNMI museum.

Included in the $50-million sale as well are a dozen or so latte stones found outside of the museum.

“These are 3,500 years old, according to the archaeologists and this one (pointing to one of the latte stones) is almost the same age as the pyramid,” said Matias, while saying that he wanted to make a replica of the old latte stone house and rent it out as Airbnb.

For those interested in buying the Rota Cave Museum, email Matias Taisacan at taisacanmatias@gmail.com.