Online auction for Shea’s Museum items begins today

Shea's Gas Station Museum, Springfield, IL

More than 200 items from the closed Shea’s Route 66 Museum in Springfield, Illinois, are going up for auction online today.

If you can’t bid right away, no worries — the auction continues through Nov. 22. The link to the auction site by Darrell L. Adcock Auction Service is here.

I surfed over the the listings before bids were being accepted. You’ll see plenty of die-cast toys, old oil cans, coin banks, old soda bottles, cigar boxes and even a 45 rpm record of Marathon Oil Co.’s 1964 campaign.

Nov. 21 also will be the live auction of the remaining items inside the museum. the gas pumps and the property itself. Some items were auctioned Oct. 10.

The family of the museum’s longtime owner, Bill Shea, entertained offers for the station and its contents since the patriarch’s death at age 91 in December 2013 but with no takers. It appears the city of Springfield already is regretting it didn’t make an offer when it had the chance.

Shea, a veteran of the D-Day invasion, started in the gas-station business in 1946. He owned Marathon and Texaco stations in Springfield. Later, Shea converted a Marathon station on Route 66 into a museum filled with gas-station items and other memorabilia. Shea greeted thousands of Route 66 travelers from dozens of countries over the years.

Shea was inducted into the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame in 1993. Dec. 30, 2011, was declared Bill Shea Day in Springfield in honor of his 90th birthday.

After Shea was admitted to a nursing home the last year of life, Bill Shea Jr. reopened the gas station by appointment until his father’s death.

(Image of Shea’s Gas Station Museum by Sandor Weisz via Flickr)

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