The Booth That Tony Soprano Sat In During The Final Scene Of The Sopranos Sold For The Bargain Basement Price Of $82,600

AP- The ice cream parlor booth where Tony Soprano may or may not have been whacked has sold for more than $82,000. As Tony would say, Madone!

An anonymous buyer bid $82,600 Monday night in an online auction for the piece of memorabilia that occupies an outsize role in the lore of the award-winning HBO series — particularly because it was where the New Jersey mob boss was sitting when the series ended by cutting to black, outraging many viewers and claiming a place in TV history.

Ron Stark, co-owner of Holsten’s, the northern New Jersey ice cream parlor, candy shop and restaurant where the scene was filmed, won’t say a word about who bought it, including whether it was a man or a woman. (That whole code of silence thing.)

Anyway, the story starts with some broken legs — on the tables of the restaurant that opened in 1939, that is. Suffice it to say, things were trending downward. “Our dining room was in kind of bad shape,” Stark said. “It was getting to the point where we didn’t think it was safe anymore because of the legs breaking, and we didn’t want anybody to actually get hurt.” Stark and his co-owner Chris Carley decided to auction off the booth and use the proceeds to pay for a renovation of the dining area.

I held out on writing this blog for a few days because I was monitoring the eBay auction where the booth was listed for about a week and noticed it had ended hours before it was supposed to end, which had me thinking something must've changed. I figured maybe Holsten's got cold feet getting rid of a legitimate New Jersey landmark or a celebrity buyer made them an offer they couldn't refuse (get it?) offline, which was only fueled by this Instagram post

However nothing new came out on Instagram other than a pic of their lovely restaurant being completely remodeled with a fancy new booth replacing the old booth.

So now I feel like whoever got that booth got it for even more of a deal since the price already seemed fair and there wasn't that last flurry of bids that usually come in during auctions. To be clear, I say this in relative terms as a Poor like myself wouldn't dare attempt to scrap together almost 100 grand for an old ass restaurant booth unless I was looking for a way to force my wife to filing for divorce. But for someone like my boss who has likely already spent more than $82,600 on chew toys for Miss Peaches, that amount is a drop in the bucket for a fixture in the last scene of what is AT WORSE a Top 5 show in television history in most peoples' minds (I personally have it number 3 behind The Wire and Breaking Bad because I hated the coma episodes but that's just me).

Sure there are more impressive things you can buy from The Sopranos. But most of them are big purchases like the Soprano's house, Tony's boat, or Satin Dolls (which every resident of New Jersey will tell you is the real life location of Bada Bing whenever you drive by it). Yet none of those items would go for less than $100,000 on eBay or are featured in the Twitter avi of Chris Klemmer, who was the number 1 trending topic on the site multiple times yesterday! #Klemmer

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The only downside to buying the booth is that it will lead to endless debates about whether or not Tony was murdered in that booth, with each person's argument almost definitely shaped by whether or not they want to believe Tony was murdered in that booth. That will then lead to a very long conversation about whether they loved or hated the ending of the show. So maybe spending $82,600 for a prop that was in one of the most divisive scenes in television history and has been farted on countless times isn't the deal I thought it was and now I'm re-evaluating all my takes in this entire blog.

P.S. I know a lot of people were confused during when the final scene cut to black but Papa Clem and I were doubly so because we paused the episode because my sister decided to barge in to talk to us during legitimately the biggest hour of entertainment of the year because she broke up with her boyfriend. At that point DVR was still in its infancy, with my dad owning a TiVo that would fuck up occasionally. So needless to say, we were especially convinced that the cut to black was the TiVo's fault and not the brainchild of David Chase, which had us freaking out without being able to go on social media to then realize what happened. I have not and will not forgive my sister for pulling that bullshit during the finale of The Sopranos. 

See? Dumb stories like this are exactly what the buyer of that booth will hear nonstop until they put it back on eBay.

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P.P.S. When I first read this story, I thought Holsten's was crazy for selling the booth considering countless mamalukes like myself would make the pilgrimage to see the booth where Tony got got while playing "Don't Stop Believing" on their iPhone. But getting a bunch of cash to remodel your restaurant and also selling what are allegedly some of the best onion rings on the planet trumps whatever tourist bump you would get from goons like myself visiting. Obviously I'm still going to go just to check out these infamous onion rings even though I'm not a big onion ring fan. I don't hate onion rings but the onion can't be too chewy or crispy. Okay I'm rambling…and hungry.