Want To Buy A Real Trader Vic's Tiki?

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 7, 2012 3:20PM

We've lamented the death of the Chicago outpost of Trader Vic's since it sadly passed away last year. The news of Paul McGee's upcoming Tiki bar stilled our cravings a tiny bit, but we still held out a nugget of hope that Trader Vic's would someday return to Chicago. After all, the tiki craze is still alive and well, and the Trader Vic's locations in other cities are doing great. But, when we found out that the original Trader Vic's tikis were being auctioned off, our hope pretty much died. On the plus side, now we can turn our living room into a tropical paradise.

Our very own Rob Christopher tipped us off to this auction from Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. He found it by being a true devotee of the cause of Tiki. When asked exactly how, he responded, "Running a daily google alert for "chicago + tiki" has its advantages."

The auction, which begins on August 22, includes more than 35 items, including full-sized tikis, end tables, lamps, masks and giant pacific clamshells. The best way to find them is to search the Marketplace auction for "Trader." Anyone wanting to open a tiki bar with some history in Chicago, take note - we were informed on our pre-opening hard hat tour of the Chicago Trader Joe's that all of the tikis were from the original Palmer House location and had been stored between gigs. These are those statutes - they were originally installed back in 1957. You can even buy the giant tiki head that guarded the entrance to that famed 1950s tiki palace.

It won't come cheap, though. The full-sized tikis are estimated to sell for between $200 and $600. The giant head? $2000. We'll definitely be keeping our eye on the bidding - maybe we need a tiki for our home bar.