Watch the video above: Honest Ed’s sign sale draws thousands. Jackson Proskow reports.
TORONTO – Ian Price lined up at 4:30 Monday morning to try and buy a piece of Toronto’s history as Honest Ed’s began auctioning off its iconic hand-painted signs.
“Came down to get a little bit of Canadiana. This is a one shot deal,” he said while waiting in line outside the Bloor Street and Bathurst Street store. “Honest Ed’s, it’s been around forever. I mean, my mom has very fond memories when she came to Toronto in the 50s. He’s touched a lot of people. When you think of Toronto, you think of Honest Ed’s.”
Honest Ed’s is auctioning off approximately 1,000 hand-painted signs in a one day sale with all the money going to Police Victims Services.
All the signs will receive a ‘stamp of authenticity’. They will also be signed by the artists and David Mirvish.
Prices start at 50 cents and are limited to three per customer. Eighty per cent of the signs are priced below $8.
Mirvish told reporters Monday the signs were designed for the most part by the artists but Ed Mirvish’s only rule was that the price had to be written in red.
“It was always fun and the signs as I say, go back many years and people wanted some memory of the store, some souvenir, so we thought ‘we kept all these signs for all these years, so we should share them now,’” David Mirvish said Monday. “They’ve turned into a real piece of memorabilia.”
People were lined up around the block by the time the auction started at 11 a.m.
WATCH: The lines stretched down the street as hundreds of memorabilia hunters ringed Honest Ed’s Monday to take advantage of the sale
Price said he was standing alone for about an hour. Then around 530, the line up grew quickly.
Rebecca Purvis bought a sign advertising the annual turkey sale, saying it’s one of the efforts that made Ed Mirvish – the store’s founder – “such a great guy.”
“We’re going to miss a huge part of our community,” she said.
The Annex property was sold to Westbank Properties – the developer of the Shangri-La hotels in Toronto and Vancouver – for an undisclosed amount in October. Honest Ed’s scheduled to close on December 31, 2016.
– With files from Jackson Proskow
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