Shea Warehouse part 2

I've promised a few people that I've e-mailed with and met that I'd have more about my visit to the MeiGray Shea Memorabilia warehouse from a few weeks ago.

Where do I begin?

This is the place that all the signs (ramp and escalator signs, section signs, directional signs, bathroom signs, some concession signs, and others), some concession carts, scoreboard lights, blue wall padding, box identification plaques, player lockers, a large collection of photos and yearbook covers, and so many other things from Shea Stadium ended up.

With a U-Haul, I could have taken home so much stuff, but nothing was cheap. A lot of it is up for auction on mets.com that you can see for yourself. It's amazing what that was taken out of Shea that's not coming over to the new ballpark.

I'll point out a few items that I found interesting (aside from the collections of signs that are in my slideshow).

• We have the part of the outfield wall marked "358". I did see a pile of wall paddings that were all sponsored (AIG, State Farm, etc.) sitting next to piles of dirty blue padding. very dirty (I may have bought a small section of padding, but it was so dirty I decided against it).
  
  
• There was a pile of what looked like on-deck circle logos, with this special one on top. I didn't think to look deeper down in the pile.
  
  
• You can't see it well on top of the big wedge of section signs, but they had what looked like some form of the retired numbers. It looked like the retired number circles cut into two pieces. That looks like part of the number 41 on top.
  
  
• I don't think I realized it then, but looking at photos, there was at least one foul poll and screen (separated).
• They had some of the carts that the vendors would use to sell scorecards and yearbooks when you walked into Shea.
  
  
• There were two whole rows of player lockers - back to back. I think they've sold some already. These didn't look that impressive. I think the beat writers should each get one to remind them of working at Shea. Not pictured was the "manager's" locker with a lifesize cutout of Willie Randolph.
  
  
• Could someone please help me out and tell me where these small neon signs were in the ballpark. - Thanks to a reader for pointing out that these neon signs came from the gate markers outside Shea (see the comments for this post) - these are the same poses that were on the exterior of the ballpark, but smaller (actually, the exterior ones are still there, for the parts of the exterior that are still there).
  
  
• These are part of about a half dozen boxes of photos that probably lived on the press level and mounted yearbook covers. I think some of this is available on the auction.
  
  
• These are a very small portion of the box identification plaques that were there. It was actually very organized together in groups and by color, and this was the exception.
  
  
• Anybody hungry?
  
  

You can see the full album on my webshots page or the slideshow on my first post on the subject.

One other note on the items themselves. Anything you buy (auction or direct, delivery or pickup), CLEAN IT. Not knocking it at all, think about where it came from and where it's been sitting.

Overall, I thought the items were very over priced, but they know there was a market. There still is a market on the auction block. Communication wasn't that good when they were getting the word out that items were for sale in September. I actually walked into their setup on the Loge concourse (I think it was right across from the Citi Field experience around section 11 & 13) before the final game and made my purchase there, not knowing that items were even up for sale. After the initial pickup at Shea in the very early days of demolition, there was very very little communication with everyone as they arranged delivery (to be fair, the person who came in to lead the effort left during that time). I didn't get called until January to arrange delivery of my items, and found it would be cheaper to rent a U-Haul and pick the items up myself.

For other notes on the items I purchased, see my posts "Signs of Shea" and "Shea Signs".