EBay, that province of vintage salt-and-pepper shakers, Darth Vader action figures (in unopened original package!) and millions of attic peculiarities, is also a repository for Stanford-related esoterica.
A recent search for “Stanford” on the auction website yielded 341 items, ranging from the predictable—Tiger Woods memorabilia showed up in 25 entries—to the outlandish. How about an 8-by-10 photograph of a shirtless Frank Zappa taken at a 1977 concert at Frost Amphitheater? Or perhaps a special-edition Stanford Barbie in a cheerleader outfit?
You can buy a book published in 1947 by the Stanford Press, titled Studying Effectively, or a CD by the band Stanford Prison Experiment or a T-shirt that reads “HARVARD: Stanford’s not for everyone,” surely a bargain at $5.24. There are old football programs and tobacco blankets (fringe missing) and felt pennants and three field passes to the 1971 Rose Bowl.
Of course, not everything appears to have recently turned up in a closet cleaning. For example, a parchment-and-leather dance program from the 1928 Senior Ball, “rolled up to look like a diploma,” looked museum-worthy. Most unusual of all: four uncut tickets from a benefit concert planned in the late ’60s at Stanford and headlined by one Jimi Hendrix. Apparently, the concert never happened (the University has no record of it), but the tickets on eBay were fetching $100.
