Aloha Stadium memorabilia goes on the auction block

Aloha Stadium was largely condemned for use almost two years ago, but there’s a special event where seats at the state-owned venue in Halawa are for sale — literally.

The state is auctioning stadium parts, equipment and memorabilia from sports, music and other events held at the entertainment facility over its 47-year history ahead of an uncertain but long-planned date with demolition and replacement.

So many artifacts, which range from treasure to trash depending on a person’s perspective, have enough potential sale value that several auctions are envisioned over possibly a year in what collectively could be the biggest auction in Hawaii’s history.

“Technically, I have 50,000 seats that I could possibly auction off,” said Samantha Spain, sales and marketing specialist for the Stadium Authority, a state agency that manages the property.

The number of items to be sold is still being determined and is hard to estimate.

“Oh gosh,” Spain said. “It’s kind of a wild guess. There are some things we didn’t even know we had.”

An initial auction is already underway with 551 items listed by Oahu Auctions and Liquidations online where bids will be accepted until 6 p.m. Oct. 26.

Items being bid on now include seat backs, half-square-foot pieces of artificial field turf, first-down markers, trash receptacles, a large poster advertisement for First Hawaiian Bank featuring current NFL quarterback Marcus Mariota and numerous signs including ones defining stadium seating sections by letters of the alphabet, ones designating the entry and exit to bathrooms, and ones directing the way to service roads.

Memorabilia also is being liquidated, including a new junior-size 2014 Hawaii Pro Bowl football, a framed photo of former University of Hawaii quarterback Nick Rolovich when he was the team’s head coach, concert promotion posters, event programs and a couple of conceptual drawings of the stadium by its architect.

There are even old reels of UH football game film that will go to high bidders, including one labeled “Hawaii — Rutgers 1974 Defense One.”

The item with the highest bid as of Friday was a golf cart, which had fetched an offer of $1,075, followed by a roughly 5-foot-wide sign in a partly rusted metal frame outside the stadium’s main entrance that reads, “Welcome to Aloha Stadium,” $340; and then a football autographed by former Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Derrick Thomas, $190.

Seat backs are the cheapest things being sold, with a $10 minimum bid requirement.

Dave Brandt, vice president at Oahu Auctions, said it’s been an adventure exploring parts of the stadium where long-forgotten items have been found.

One discovery available for sale in the current and upcoming auctions: poster-size black-and-white prints of local people enjoying sports around the state as well as events at the stadium, including UH football and a circus. The prints, dating to the 1980s, were installed above breezeways leading to seating sections but had been covered up by advertising signs for decades until recently.

Brandt said some recent visitors to the stadium recognized family members and friends in the photos.

“That’s pretty cool,” he said.

Spain, who has worked at the stadium for 11 years, said another surprise was inside a 5-foot-tall wooden crate in a storage room nicknamed “Deadwood” under the south end zone. No one at the agency knew what was in the crate, Spain said, until it was opened during auction preparation. Inside were two 40-second Pro Bowl play clocks from 1982 that were never used. Someone has bid $16 for the pair.

A control panel for the original main scoreboard, which was replaced in the 1980s, also was unearthed and is destined to be sold at an upcoming auction.

Among the item not being auctioned are the main scoreboard and video display, which is going to UH, a scale model of Aloha Stadium, bronze sculptures outside the stadium, framed concert promotion posters, a Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame display and signed collections of photos, uniforms, helmets and other things from local sports stars including Mariota and late UH quarterback Colt Brennan. All these items are to be relocated in a new stadium.

Additionally, some things at Aloha Stadium were claimed by other state entities, including UH, which scooped up turnstiles and VIP suite furnishings among other items, high schools that were interested in items such as coolers and remnant turf, and corrections system officials whose take included fixtures.

Brandt said his goal with the initial auction is to “break the ice” and generate interest that can be sustained through perhaps five or six subsequent auctions. Future auctions could have category themes, such as food and beverage equipment and machinery.

Items expected to be featured in upcoming auctions include goal posts, about 2,000 program booklets from the last Pro Bowl played at Aloha Stadium in 2016, player equipment lockers, pay phones, an overhead slide projector as well as more signs and memorabilia.

More seat backs also will be offered. About 200 seat backs are in the initial auction, including some from the stadium’s topmost “yellow” section that have turned gray because they are so badly faded.

A giant analog clock that was part of a Sony Jumbo­Tron video display — installed in 1991 and removed in 2010 — also may be sold after the auction series, if there isn’t a good place to display it in a new stadium, Spain said.

Brandt said he plans to offer UH football season-ticket holders a priority opportunity to buy the entire seat they typically sat in for a fixed price later this year, but he first needs to figure out how to make each seat functional because the metal frames for nearly all seats in the stadium are continuous with entire rows and need to be cut apart and modified to stand alone.

The pieces of turf being auctioned are substitute end zone and midfield sections that were new in 2011 and 2017. Brandt aims to find a single buyer for the 110,000 square feet of turf currently on the gridiron, which was installed in 2016 at a cost of $1.2 million.

Another idea Brandt is exploring is selling chunks of rusted stadium paneling as an odd artifact that might appeal to some people.

“I probably will do some stuff like that,” he said, noting that people have bought broken pieces of the Berlin Wall. “Anything that anybody wants to buy, we can auction it.”

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Make a bid

See the hundreds of Aloha Stadium items up for bid in the auction.

>> Go to oahuauctions.com.

>> First auction closes Oct. 26.

Plans for Aloha Stadium tours

The Stadium Authority plans to offer public guided and unguided tours of the stadium starting in early 2023 with access to places that aren’t typically open to the public, including locker rooms, the field and spaces filled with the most prized memorabilia from the past 47 years.

Tour information is to be posted online later this year at aloha stadium.hawaii.gov.