The Cardinals have spent more than $1 million at auctions in the last 13 years to expand the artifacts in the team's Hall of Fame Museum.

Two years ago, for example, the club bid $84,000 for Bob Gibson's 1968 National League Cy Young Award trophy at an auction. But when that treasure arrived at Busch Stadium it was, in an Indiana Jones-like movie ending, boxed and taken back into a storage vault to sit with thousands of other items, waiting for the museum to reopen.

It has been closed since November 2008.

A hostage to Ballpark Village, the museum has started two current endeavors that will showcase the collection. Last week, the Cardinals launched a website — cardinals.com/museum — dedicated to the museum, complete with virtual exhibits, featuring items (for example, Lou Brock's equipment bag from the 1970s) and biographies on Cardinals players. This week, the museum shipped almost 100 items to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark. The artifacts will be featured in an exhibit called "Play Ball! The St. Louis Cardinals" that runs from March 3 to Sept. 16.

"It's been challenging in some ways because we know that there is a segment of our fan base that really misses the opportunity to come to the museum and see what we have to offer," said Paula Homan, the curator of the Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum. "On the other hand, we're taking care of the collection as best we can."

The Clinton exhibit has been in the planning stages since 2010 and will feature items from Dizzy Dean, an Arkansas native, like the road jersey the Cardinals own and other gems. The library is adding to the exhibit a jersey Stan Musial and other Cardinals officials presented President Clinton during a White House visit.

"I knew the collection was kind of available for a limited time because of it not having a home," said Kurt Senn, the library's deputy director. "As the closest major-league team and one people in this area knew through radio, we knew we had interest and a limited window to do this."

Added Homan: "We've been able to provide the Clinton library with this quality of a loan primarily because my doors aren't open. I wouldn't be able to do something at this level if we had a hall."

The museum moved from the ballpark to the Bowling Hall of Fame in 1997 and filled most of the first floor at the downtown building until 2008. The plan was then to relocate the hall to a spacious and prominent location in Ballpark Village. The economy cratered. Ballpark Village entered limbo, and construction has yet to begin. The museum remains boxed. More than 16,000 artifacts and more than 80,000 photos are housed in two storage facilities at Busch.

The Bowling Hall of Fame still sits vacant, but Homan said moving back is not an option because the building is inhospitable, and the museum fought leaks and damage to items even when it was home.

A new museum "is definitely on the horizon," Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III said. "We do have definitive plans to open a museum in Ballpark Village. … If we ever thought that project was dead in the water, we would start to explore (alternative sites). We have enough confidence that it's going to happen that we're better off waiting."

The current view of the museum's future is a floor plan that triples the size of its former home. DeWitt described how the museum would feature a restaurant, a more traditional Hall of Fame display area and even a balcony that allowed fans to look across Clark Avenue and into the ballpark for games. The Cardinals also plan to make a team "Hall of Fame" a tent pole of the museum so that more than just Cardinals inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame can be honored. The club president said "not to tip our hand ... (but) Willie McGee would be a first-ballot Cardinals Hall of Famer."

Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. pointed out that the Ballpark Village idea has gone through several designs, ones that included apartment buildings and others that focused on anchor businesses. The "one thing that's been a constant," he said, is the museum.

"It has become a team initiative to try and accumulate everything that has importance to the franchise," DeWitt said. "Maybe these things are worth more to us than others."

He laughed: "Maybe that's why we've had success at the auctions."

Opened in 1968, the hall was donation-driven for its first three decades, Homan said. A large portion of the collection came from Musial, who donated 75 percent of his personal collection, including the ball from the first homer he hit as a grandpa and the letter he sent to finalize his retirement.

In 1999, collector Barry Halper's vast collection, valued then at more than $40 million, went to auction. The DeWitts, whose personal collection includes a complete set of World Series press pins dating back to 1911, saw an opportunity. At the Halper auction, they made what was billed then as the museum's 'single largest acquisition."

That haul included a 1919 Branch Rickey Cardinals jersey that cost the club $37,500. Several years later, the club won an auction for pitcher Pete Alexander's jersey from the 1926 World Series, the Cardinals' first title. Reported price: $92,160.

Bill DeWitt III said the goal became "to fill in the gaps" at the museum. His father and the club continue to get books from auction houses, and Chairman DeWitt pages through them personally looking for gold. The club also now has a budget set aside for acquisitions. The club likes to believe its collection surpasses other clubs and is second in quality to Cooperstown. It has at least one ring from every championship and something from every era, from Alexander to Todd Zeile and beyond.

The club wants to provide a better home for memorabilia than a shelf, even if it is alongside rare company like a Dean jersey.

"One of the many reasons why I'm anxious to get started is because I think it will be easier when players see tangibly that it's there for fans," DeWitt said. "My sales job will be unnecessary at that point — when players can see how their items fit into the great legacy. When you say we want to tell a story with the artifact, that can't happen right now. Right now, we're saying, 'Eventually we'd like to tell a story with your items.'

"It speaks to the urgency of doing that."