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A new series of online auctions dubbed "Gifts to the City" will allow some lucky New Yorkers to basically own a piece of the town's history. Featuring items that were gifted to New York mayors throughout the years, the sales will occur on a rolling basis starting this month.
The initial roster of 50 items up for action includes a Tiffany & Co. cake slicer inscribed for the Museum of the City of New York Groundbreaking in 2006 and gifted to then-mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Louis Vuitton 1998 World Cup soccer ball that belonged to mayor Rudy Giuliani, a glass apple-shaped paperweight that the one-and-only Diana Ross once gave mayor David Dinkins and a framed front page of The Village Voice featuring the cover story "Mayor Dearest: An Exclusive Preview of Mayor Koch's Memoirs," a present to the subject of the article.
Although the auctions are presented by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, it's important to note that any gifts received by the mayors during their terms are actually property of the city and managed by the Department of Records and Information Services. The latter organization has deemed the various auction entries "to have no research or archival value," according to an official press release, hence the sale.
"Purchasers will receive a special certificate of provenance certifying that the item sold at auction is an authentic gift originally received by a Mayor of the City of New York and that the purchase will support the work of the Municipal Archives and Municipal Library," explains Pauline Toole, the NYC Department of Records and Information Services Commissioner, in an official statement.
You can look through and bid on each item right here, where a new set of auctions will be published every few weeks.
Clearly, all featured entries may make for wonderful, only-in-New-York holiday gifts—so get bidding.