A Bayside street sign auction raised $7,500. A second is underway

Nostalgic Bayside residents have a second chance to get their hands on one of the village’s old street signs.

The village recently transitioned out its old street signs, replacing them with new ones in order to comply with recent state laws changing the requirements for street signs.

Many of Bayside’s signs didn’t comply due to the presence of lowercase letters and new visibility requirements, Village Board President Eido Walny said.

With the transition comes an opportunity for residents to purchase a lasting memory of their street through an auction that will close Dec. 15 at 11:45 p.m. hosted on the website givebutter.com.

The auction is the second round the village has organized, with the first lasting from Sept. 8 through Oct. 20. This auction will include signs that were not bid on last time, as well as signs with the new Bayside logo.

Walny said the first round was, “extraordinarily successful and went well beyond our wildest dreams.”

“When you turn essentially garbage into revenue for the village, that's a huge win for everybody,” he said.

Of the almost 250 signs listed in the first round, all but 39 sold, raising close to $7,500 for the village, he said.

Signs typically sold for around $20 to $25 dollars, but a handful were sold at upwards of $60. The highest-selling sign, a wayfinding sign directing drivers toward places like the Police Department, Village Hall, Ellsworth Park and the Nature Center, sold for $127.

For the second auction, 64 street signs were posted for bidding Nov. 16, including East Brown Deer Road, East Buttles Place and East Ellsworth Lane.

Walny said while he was able to place winning bids on a few signs, the bidding was so fervent he was outbid on the sign for his own neighborhood, which one of his neighbors now owns.

One of the signs Walny won once marked an intersection at Port Washington Road and Brown Deer Road, where a development Walny was heavily involved in is now located. He also won one of the highly-coveted wayfarer signs. 

He hopes to adorn them on the outside of his house and in the basement.

“We're so used to driving by these signs at 25 or 40 miles per hour, depending on where in the county you are. But when I actually picked these up, they're way bigger than you would think,” he said.

“Most municipalities would probably just recycle those street signs,” Walny said. “In Bayside, we tend to be pretty creative with finding ways of getting revenue where others aren't seeing opportunities.”

After the auction ends, signs must be picked up from Village Hall by January 12, according to a description on the auction site.

Contact Claudia Levens at clevens@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @levensc13