Want an old Toronto street sign? The city is auctioning them off

Finally, a way to score cool street signs without having to tear them down at 3 a.m. after getting drunk in someone’s basement. (What, you never went to high school in 1999?) Over the next year, Platinum Liquidations, an online auctioneer that contracts with the city, will be selling off over 1000 old street signs that have been “decommissioned” since 2007, when Toronto’s now-familiar blue and white aluminum signage made its debut. The auction plan has been in the works for about two years.

The first batch of 100 signs will hit the site on Monday, April 28, with new batches going up every week over the coming 12 months. Once the signs are up, interested collectors will have 60 days to bid on the ones they want, after which time they’ll go to highest bidder. (There’s apparently no way to find out what signs are going up when, so collectors looking for a particular street name will have to keep checking the site.) Bidding starts at $30, which is significantly less than the $100 minimum reported last fall. Still, we expect some of the edgier streets—the Queens and Ossingtons—will go for a few hundo at least. You could maybe get a bargain on a nice Sherbourne, though.