MANHATTAN — Wanted: vendor to sell 51,000 pieces of New York history.
The city is officially looking for a company to help them sell its old-school, coin-operated parking meters.
In a request for proposal issued Thursday, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services wrote that it is seeking "an appropriately qualified vendor in the memorabilia, surplus, auction, and scrap field" to buy up to 51,000 meters removed from the city's streets and manage the great parking meter sell-off.
The city retired the last single-space, coin-operated parking meter in Manhattan on Sept. 19. It's replaced the clunky meters with state-of-the-art, solar-powered muni-meters that can control eight to 10 parking spaces with the swipe of a card instead of the drop of a coin.
"Interested in NYC #history? Check out the RFP to buy and sell single space parking meters!" wrote the Department of Transportation in a tweet.
The city's first parking meter was installed in Harlem in 1951. There were 72,000 meters throughout the five boroughs, and Manhattan claimed 16,500 of them.
There are still about 43,000 of the single-space meters left in the outer boroughs, though the city is working on modernizing those.
Interested meter-hawkers can visit the Middle Village, Queens, storehouse where the meters are currently kept on Nov. 2 and Nov. 4. The application is on the City Record Online website, and due on Nov. 23.
