After rebranding Twitter last month as “X,” and doing away with the iconic bird logo, Elon Musk has now begun cleaning house at the social media platform, announcing a fire-sale of items featuring the platform’s now-defunct logos and iconography.
Heritage Global Partners auction house has announced it will be selling 678 lots of memorabilia, art, and office assets drawn from Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, including the giant blue bird sign which used to be on the side of the building.
The auction will also include espresso machines, furniture, musical instruments, fridges, lockers and beer dispensers, all of which have been deemed unneeded since the platform changed its name and branding last month.
Also included in the auction will be oil paintings of two well-known photos which went viral on the social media platform – the selfie shot by Ellen DeGeneres at the 2014 Oscars, which featured Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, and Lupita Nyong’o, and the shot of Barack Obama hugging his wife Michelle following his winning the 2012 Presidential election.
The auction is also to include an “indoor barn,” a raft of hashtag-related art, a vinyl collection, and a dishwasher.
The starting offer for each lot will be $25, according to the listing. The auction begins on September 12th at 2pm GMT and will end on September 14.
The auction will be the second such sale at the company since Musk acquired it. He previously held an auction in January for over 600 office items. One Twitter bird statue which was up for sale sold for $100,000, while a neon sign featuring the bird logo sold for $40,000.
Although the previous auction was held following financial troubles for the company following a raft of advertisers withdrawing their ads at the company, the organizers denied the auction was in any way related to the company’s financial troubles. However observers have noted that last month, Musk observed that cashflow was still negative at the company, after ad revenue declined by 50% as the debts for the company continue to mount.
However many feel the auction is just one more step by Musk to purge the company of its past as Twitter, as he seeks to transform it into an “everything” app which will handle a user’s banking, investing, travel, telephone, text messaging, video-conferencing, shopping, and other functions.