New York Magazine: Montandon: Harvesting Yankee Stadium

‘Wheeeewy’...Good thing I scraped and saved crumbly rust off a sweet Yankee Stadium view-blocker back in the 60’s.

The real payday will come from the liquidation of the stadium’s hardware. Industry pros and collectors guess that even the most quotidian items—bricks, on-deck batters’ weights, fungo bats, etc.—will sell for hundreds of dollars. Anything that distinguishes itself will go for much more. Mike Heffner, president of the memorabilia company Lelands (which ran the scavenging of the Boston Garden), guesses he could sell the dugout phones for $2,000, A-Rod’s locker for $50,000, the YANKEE STADIUM façade lettering for $50,000 as well, and the white frieze atop the scoreboard for $250,000. (Heffner points out that the uniqueness and grandeur of an item can be tempered by the logistical inconvenience of owning it, which is why he thinks a small, self-enclosed, relatively easy-to-display locker would go for as much as the iconic façade lettering, for which “you’d need an 80,000-square-foot house.”)

Heffner might get his chance. The City of New York owns the seats, dugouts, flagpoles, and other “permanent” structures at both Yankee and Shea stadia. With so much money to be made, concerns besides Steiner have been angling for a piece of the action. A multiparty negotiation between the city, the teams, Steiner, and other vendors is ongoing. In the past, the city has been criticized for the favorable terms on which it rents out the stadia to the teams—the Mets paid $550,000 a year in Shea rent for 30 straight years at one point; in fiscal 2007, the Parks Department collected more in Yankee Stadium parking fees ($3 million) than it did in rent ($2.3 million). More recently, the city has been attacked by watchdog groups for giving the teams big breaks on the new ballparks—one critic estimated the municipal government’s contribution to the new Yankee Stadium at over $415 million (the city says it’s $280 million). Asked roughly what share of the auction loot the city would be looking for, New York City Economic Development Corporation president and chief negotiator Seth Pinsky said acidly, “The percentage will be between 0 and 100, and the dollar amount will be above zero.”