For the Knicks fan who has everything (we’re looking at you, Ben Stiller), New York City has something of interest..
The Department of Transportation on Wednesday is putting up for auction the first of the “Champions Way” street signs that were hung along the team’s ticker tape parade route last month to commemorate their first N.B.A. championship win in decades.
The blue-and-orange, 36-inch-wide aluminum sign, created in the same shop in Queens where the rest of the city’s official street signs are fabricated, is one of only 30 that were installed along the stretch of Broadway known as the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan. There are no plans yet to sell the remaining 29 signs.
The bidding will begin at $100 at 9 a.m. Wednesday and end on Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 8 p.m. The money raised will go toward the city’s general fund, where it might help cover operating costs, from paying teachers’ salaries to filling potholes.
Bids will climb in $10 increments, and, if past experience is any indicator, the contest could get heated.
In June, the city listed, for $100 each, 200 identical replicas of the sign — ones built in the same shop, but never displayed along the parade route.
The sale caught the attention of at least one noted superfan. Mr. Stiller, a fixture on celebrity row at Madison Square Garden, replied to the agency’s social media post about the replica sale with a bulging-eyes emoji.
Mr. Stiller did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his interest in buying the genuine article.
The replica signs sold out in seven minutes, according to the Transportation Department.
“The Knicks brought home a championship after a 53-year drought, and now is your chance to own a unique piece of the festivities,” Mike Flynn, the transportation commissioner, said in a statement.
The appeal of rare Knicks memorabilia, especially items with New Yorker bona fides, is hard to overstate.
A miniature model of the 34th Street subway station entrance close to Madison Square Garden, painted in Knicks’ blue-and-orange, has sold out repeatedly at the New York Transit Museum.
No object imbued with the team’s winning aura has been off limits. Angie Baez, an executive director for community and industry engagement for JPMorgan Chase, lost her job in June after being caught trying to steal a commemorative Knicks garbage can during the parade.
The auction is being held through the auction portal of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the agency that handles the vast inventory of stuff accrued by the city’s bureaucracy — castoff parking meters, used furniture and, occasionally, rare municipal treasures.
In 2022, the comedians Colin Jost and Pete Davidson impulse-bought a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry from the auction site for about $280,000.
“Our auctions reflect the full breadth of how city government connects to the identity of our city,” Yume Kitasei, the agency’s commissioner, said in a statement.
The agency said that during the previous fiscal year, it held roughly 965 auctions that raised about $1.2 million — a small sum, relative to the city’s $126 billion budget, but a help nonetheless.
The most expensive item ever sold through the auctions was a hopper barge once owned by the Sanitation Department. Sale price: $293,255.
Asked about future auctions, Ms. Kitasei said there were no plans to sell any of the Knicks-themed garbage cans — yet — but the agency was optimistic about the sales potential of the street sign.
“When it comes to these Knicks,” she said, “anything is possible.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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