Selling off foundational relics to private bidders is imho a sign that an organization is done.
D'oh, they already did last year. So maybe just clearing out their storage.
Because the artifacts are not critical to FSF's core mission, raising and spending donations to insure them might not be the best use of limited resources.
I'm inferring the real-life katana was a joke based on #225 (and maybe Randall Munroe wrote it in again in reference to the real-life object).