On Sunday the auction opened online, and people started bidding on those Manago Hotel pork chops.
The Kona Historical Society launched its annual fundraiser, which is conducted completely online, offering vintage, antique and one-of-a-kind Kona items to the highest bidder. The auction is open until 7 p.m. July 22.
That pork chop dinner for two is a hot item.
The Kona Historical Society is a community-based nonprofit that has two sites on state and national registries for historic places. The H.N. Greenwell Store, restored by the society to depict the way it looked in the 1890s, is home to a living-history program where visitors can interact with museum staff portraying actual people associated with the store’s past. Every Thursday, in a pasture below the Greenwell Store Museum, there’s a free Portuguese bread baking program at a large outdoor oven. Visitors learn to roll the dough and participate in the baking process. Close to 100 loaves of bread are baked and sold each week.
The Kona Coffee Living History Farm is a 5.5-acre working farm where people can experience life much as it was in the 1930s.
The auction is the historical society’s biggest fundraiser of the year.
“We have been holding our online auction every year since 2010,” said Dance Aoki, development director for the historical society. “Last year broke a lot of records. We were able to raise more than $45,000 in gross funds through the Bidding for Good auction website.”
Aoki says winning bids have come from as far away as Florida and Massachusetts, though a majority of the bidders are from Hawaii. The Kona Historical Society will ship most items to winning bidders all over the country. A few — for example, a 27-inch vintage wok with wooden cover — are too big to be shipped and must be picked up in person.
Offered for auction is a vintage donkey saddle made of wood, a 1967 restaurant menu from the Volcano House, a menu from the 1957 Christmas dinner onboard the SS Lurline and a handwoven lau hala hatband. There is a rare first-edition book by Queen Lili‘uokalani. There are a number of beautiful old photographs printed on canvas that depict bygone ranch life, the rough loveliness of coffee farms and the dramatic lines of Kona’s landscape.
Along with items that speak to Kona’s rich heritage, there are the elements of modern Kona: original art, tickets for a waterfall ATV excursion, rounds of golf at beautiful ocean-view courses, a painter offering a commissioned portrait of your pet.
Donations continue to come in even as the auction is ongoing, so Aoki advises interested bidders to keep checking in.
As for the pork chops — they don’t have to actually be pork chops. The winning bidder will get dinner for two at the historic Manago Hotel, which first opened in Kona in 1917 and is known for simple oceanside rooms, no TV, shared bathrooms and a family-style dinner which includes choices like steak, liver and fish as well as those famous chops.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
