Sea Isle Street Sign Sale Offers a Piece of Local History

By DONALD WITTKOWSKI This could be the ultimate Sea Isle City souvenir. The beach town will offer year-round residents and local property owners a way to buy a unique piece of local history. On Saturday, Aug. 6, more than 300 old street signs will be sold for $35 each on a first come, first served basis. City spokeswoman Katherine Custer noted that the signs would otherwise be thrown out, but Sea Isle wanted to make them available to people who would appreciate their novelty and nostalgia. “We absolutely are selling these signs because we know that people want a piece of Sea Isle for themselves,” she said in an interview Friday. “They love this town. This gives them a physical item they can own from the past.” In the last two years, Sea Isle installed hundreds of new street signs from First Street in the north end of town to 94th Street at the southern part of the island. The old-fashioned street signs that had a green background and white lettering were replaced with bigger, easier to read signs that have a black background and white lettering. “Now, we have all new signs on all streets,” Custer said. Inspired by a similar street sign sale held two or three years ago in Wildwood Crest, Sea Isle officials decided to part with their old green signs in similar fashion. “They said they sold nearly all of their signs,” Custer said of Wildwood Crest. “It was popular there. We expect it to be popular here.” The old street signs with a green background, like this one on 78th Street, have since been replaced with new signs with a black background and white lettering. Sea Isle’s sale will be limited to year-round residents and local property owners. Buyers will be asked to line up outside of the Sea Isle City Community Lodge parking lot at 300 JFK Boulevard on the morning of Aug. 6. Starting at 8 a.m., they will be invited inside the Community Lodge in groups to buy the street signs of their choice. All buyers will be served in the order they are in line. The sale will run from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., or until the signs sell out. Only cash and checks will be accepted. Each person attending the sale will be permitted to purchase a maximum of three signs. Each sign will be sold “as is.” There will be no advance sales, and buyers cannot reserve street signs that they wish to purchase, according to a city news release. Signs from nearly every street and avenue in Sea Isle will be included in the sale. However, quantities from certain streets will be extremely limited. The following signs will not be available: 14th Street, 26th Street, 44th Place, 86th Street and 90th Street. “Unfortunately, over the years we’ve had some thefts on some streets and some signs were damaged,” Custer explained of why signs for some streets will not be up for sale. For more information about the street sign sale, contact the City Clerk’s Office at (609) 263-4461, ext. 1237, or the Department of Community Services at (609) 263-8687, ext. 103.