Maybe you don’t know Secretariat from Seattle Slew, but you do have a chance at owning a piece of horse racing history.
After the 150th running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, Pimlico, the storied racetrack in Baltimore, was shuttered for good.
The aging track is being razed, while a new track and complex is planned to reopen in 2027.
Maryland’s Department of General Services is in charge of auctioning off items from Pimlico, and Assistant Secretary of Business Enterprise Administration Ronnie Dampier told WTOP that while the online auction kicked off Saturday, there are plenty of good items left.
And he said you don’t have to be a racing fan, you could also be a history buff or someone who just enjoys collecting one-of-a-kind items.
“We have things like benches that are original to Pimlico,” Dampier said. “We have brass finish hand railings, we have pictures.”
They also have seats up for auction where fans who once sipped the famous Black Eyed Susan cocktails or waited to see if their horse came in to win, place or show would have watched the races.
Dampier said it’s bittersweet yet “very exciting” to see the dismantling of a racetrack that hosted Triple Crown winners from Sir Barton in 1919 to Justify in 2018.
“The new Pimlico that will be created, I truly believe, is going to be quite, quite the sight to see,” he said, referring to the future of the site.
In the meantime, he said the auction has a lot to offer.
“This is a piece of history that you get to own. It’s a piece of history that you get to keep and share those stories with your families, your children, your friends.”
In the 2000s, Pimlico not only hosted the Preakness, the second gem in the Triple Crown, but its infield became famous — or infamous — for what became known as “the running of the urinals.” Attendees who were then allowed to bring their own beverages, would clamber on top of the portable toilets that were lined up, and hop from the top of one to the next while some members of the crowd lobbed cans of beer their way.
Chichi Nyagah-Nash, deputy secretary of the Department of General Services, said items from those days would not be auctioned off.
“Those would not be up for sale; as with most event sites, those urinals were rented from vendors. So unfortunately, no. There will not be any of the tossed beer cans or the dented urinals for sale in this auction,” she told WTOP.
But Nyagah-Nash said the Department of General Services regularly makes surplus items available for sale to the public, and that somewhere, there are lucky Ravens fans with memorabilia in their homes. She said the department recently ran an auction of inventory from M&T Bank Stadium.
“We make available items that go beyond things like copiers and desks and used furniture from the state,” she said. “For example, a high-top table with a Ravens logo on it is now in someone’s living room because of us posting it.”
The current auction of items from Pimlico continues through Friday.
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