Lehman Brothers Memorabilia Collector Guide

Why Lehman Brothers items became collectible

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The company’s own filing adds that several U.K. affiliates, including Lehman Brothers International (Europe), were placed into administration. Reuters later called it the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and the firm’s failure became a symbol of the 2008 financial crisis.

That changed how people saw ordinary corporate objects. Two days after the filing, NPR reported that Lehman employees had begun auctioning company memorabilia on eBay, including T-shirts, mouse pads, a mug and a golf club bearing the logo. Staff at Merrill Lynch were doing the same. These were everyday branded goods. Their appeal now came from the name and the event it stood for.

Two years later, an auction showed how deep that interest ran. Christie’s held a Lehman sale in London on September 29, 2010. The administrators had held off for two years, waiting for the art market to recover so creditors would get the best return. Christie’s reported 1,100 registered bidders, 330 of them bidding online, and the sale raised £1.6 million, more than forecast.

The Christie’s sale and the London sign

The biggest surprises came from the building pieces. Christie’s reported that the corporate sign from the firm’s London office sold for £42,050, which Reuters put at more than $66,000 and over 15 times its estimate. A metal plaque commemorating the 2004 opening of the Canary Wharf offices sold for £28,750, more than $45,000, against pre-sale expectations of $1,500 to $2,500. Reuters attributed the prices to collectors and souvenir hunters chasing keepsakes of the collapse.

The sign is also a lesson in how fragile those prices can be. It returned to Christie’s in September 2013, when UPI, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported an expected price of about $12,500 to $19,000 for the metal sign, which measures roughly 22 by 118 inches. The Art Newspaper records that a Lehman Brothers sign sold at Christie’s that year for £9,375. Treat a record set during a burst of public attention as one data point.

Reuters also reported that Sotheby’s had sold Lehman art worth $12.3 million the weekend before. Artwork from a corporate collection is a different category from branded memorabilia, and buyers should evaluate it as art first and as a Lehman connection second.

What collectors find

Most Lehman pieces fall into a few groups, and each one raises different questions for a buyer.

• Employee and office giveaways: shirts, mugs, mouse pads, golf items and similar logo goods, the kind of objects employees listed on eBay in September 2008
• Deal toys, also called tombstones: Lucite keepsakes marking financial deals, which Wall Street firms gave to executives and bankers
• Novelty shapes: one Lehman deal toy took the form of a George Foreman Grill, marking a financing for the company that sold products under the boxer’s name
• Signs and plaques: building pieces such as the London corporate sign and the Canary Wharf opening plaque sold at Christie’s in 2010
• Later novelty items: satirical goods such as a Lehman “Risk Management” cap, which joke about the collapse and comment on the firm rather than come from it

A short history of the tombstone

Deal toys grew out of the tombstone advertisement, a newspaper notice that put a transaction on public record and promoted the bankers who handled it. The Fiscal Times traces deal toys to the 1970s, when banks wanted something more lasting than a newspaper page. The first versions simply encased the printed tombstone.

Later designs became sculptural and playful, which is why a Lehman deal toy can look like a kitchen appliance. For a collector, the useful fact is that each tombstone marks one specific transaction. That makes the deal itself part of the object’s identity and gives you something concrete to check.

What to check before buying

A famous name invites exaggeration. Judge the object and the evidence the seller provides, not the story attached to the listing.

• Original or later: anything that jokes about the bankruptcy was made after September 2008 and is a novelty item, not Lehman-issued merchandise
• Production clues: a design offered in many sizes and colors at once points to new production rather than a surviving original
• Provenance: a former employee’s story is welcome but is not proof; ask for an auction invoice or lot number, a gift letter, period photographs or other documents
• Deal toys: confirm that the company, transaction and date shown on the piece agree with each other and with public records of the deal
• Printed material: for an annual report, brochure or letter, check that the year, company name and any executives named fit the firm’s history
• Condition: look for cracks, chips, clouding and deep scratches in acrylic; fading, stains, cracked prints and missing tags in textiles; water damage and missing pages in paper
• Price: asking prices are not sales, so compare completed sales where the marketplace shows them, and treat the 2010 auction results as the product of unusually high interest
• Returns: favor sellers whose return terms let you inspect a collectible in hand

Where to find Lehman Brothers items now

Since the firm’s collapse, Lehman items move through the secondary market. The Lehman Brothers company page on I ♥ Capitalism collects live, relevance-checked resale listings and links each one to the marketplace where it is offered. Inventory changes whenever sellers add or remove an item, so read each listing for condition, provenance and return terms before you buy.