(The following story by Stacie Hamel appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on February 9.)
OMAHA, Neb. — Tanner Hernandez enjoys digging into a modern-day archaeological site for 14 hours a day.
Since November, the latest dig for Hernandez and a crew of 20 has been the 12-story, 575,000-square-foot former headquarters of Union Pacific Corp. in downtown Omaha.
“I feel like a historian,” he said.
The first of more than 10,000 items will go up for auction Thursday, the start of a three-day sale down the street from the U.P. building in a ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel, 1616 Dodge St. The sales total could reach $500,000, said Hernandez, general manager of Prime Time Auctions of Pocatello, Idaho.
Auctioneers operating simultaneously in two rings will sing out bids on such finds as original 1910 door hardware bearing the U.P. logo, as well as mundane office items such as desk lamps, cubicle panels and cleaning equipment. Online bids also will be accepted.
“We’ll be lucky to get through it in three days,” Hernandez said.
Doors will open at 8:30 a.m. each day, and the auction will run from 9 a.m. to “whenever we’re done,” Hernandez said, which he estimated will be about 6:30 p.m. each day.
The potential treasure-trove has drawn interest from as far away as Chicago and Denver, he said.
Other than a few select pieces on display at the hotel, sale items won’t be present. They’ll be shown on large video screens and listed in detail in an auction catalog. The items themselves remain at the U.P. building, and no preview was offered.
Unusual finds have brightened what otherwise could be tedious work for the auction crew as they catalog, photograph and box, for example, hundreds of dust-coated valves and pipe fittings from a wall-length cabinet in the overwhelmingly musty basement.
Or listing the details of conference chairs, desk chairs, reception chairs, dining chairs – 5,000 chairs in all.
Not everything was so ordinary. But not all of the fun finds will be found up for sale.
The staff of U.P.’s Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs took custody of anything with historical significance, such as paperwork and maps.
One unusual auction-bound find is a rack of floor plans and elevations for U.P.’s new headquarters and its Harriman Dispatch Center.
Other offerings:
o Tables featuring replicas of the golden spike that completed the Transcontinental Railroad.
o A medical exam table from U.P.’s health clinic.
o A 1995 Pontiac Grand Am 2.3L “automatic good tires (overheats & no stereo).”
o A nearly 10-foot-tall walnut wardrobe from the 1800s with ornately carved lion-head handles and four beveled mirrors; labeled, “Ch. Jeanselme & Co., Paris.”
The wardrobe could sell for as much as $5,000, but predicting how much items will bring is difficult, Hernandez said. U.P. didn’t set minimum bids.
The auction also gives employees, the public, rail buffs and even employees from other railroads an opportunity to bid, he said.
Employees might be especially drawn to an elegant desk made of Canadian cherry. It once held the nameplate of the company’s top executive, Richard K. Davidson.