Gifts to various New York City mayors up for auction
NEW YORK - If you want to own pieces of New York City history, including art, jewelry, and sports memorabilia, they're part of an online auction underway now.
The sale is called "Gifts To The City," with items given to former mayors.
Trinkets and treasures, presented to four New York City mayors: Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani and Bloomberg. The law says mayors can't keep them, and they become city property.
"We have a tradition of selling articles that don't have archival value," said Pauline Toole, commissioner of the Department of Records and Information Services.
Toole showed CBS2's Dave Carlin items in the auction, which benefits the Municipal Archives Reference and Research Fund.
For sale? Nike Air Force Ones signed by Ice T and Fab Five Freddy. From the Koch era, a framed Village Voice front page, and artwork of him. From Giuliani, a basketball signed by the 1999 New York Knicks. A Louis Vuitton soccer ball is expected to fetch $8,000.
"It's from the World Cup in 1998," Toole said.
Diana Ross gave Dinkins a paperweight Big Apple that shines.
The items are inside a city building that outshines the others: 31 Chambers Street.
"It's modeled on an opera house in Paris," Toole said. "When it's a sunny day the light streams in, and it illuminates, of course, all of this gold marble."
The conservation lab is in the basement, where one special auction item is being stored in a safe -- a 25-inch long strand of pearls from the Bloomberg era.
More sales are planned. There is a trove of uncatalogued items from the de Blasio era, some of them will be found in upcoming auctions.
The auction ends during the first week of December. Items may have different deadlines.
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