The parlor booth where Tony Soprano sat with his family in the final scene of “The Sopranos” was just sold at auction… and someone gave it five figures.
Tony's booth has been a tourist attraction at Holsten's Ice Cream Shop in Broomfield, NJ for many years. But the store needed renovation and the parlor booth had to go to the highest bidder.
Holsten's put the famous furniture – booths, tables, partitions and custom plaques reserving seats for the Sopranos family – on eBay last week with an opening bid of $3,000, and an all-out bidding war ensued.
Once things calmed down on Monday, the auction ended and the booth sold for $82,600. This was enough to cover the cost of Holsten's upcoming new floor and booth renovation.
Not included in the $82,000. Tony ordered onion rings and dropped a quarter to play Journey's classic song “Don't Stop Believin'” while waiting for his wife, son, and daughter to join him at the booth.
The film crew added a jukebox. After the performance, Holsten put up a plaque that read, “This booth is reserved for the Soprano Family.”
Since the finale and ending were edited to black, Holsten's has become a destination for “Sopranos” fans who make pilgrimages to Tony's final location. But wear and tear over the years led the ice cream shop to sell the piece. of TV history.
As Holsten explained… “Please understand that we don't want to do this, but now the integrity of the booth has been compromised. The booth has been repaired several times and this furniture is over 60 years old. Clearly we don't want to . In order to do so, the situation has become structurally unsafe and we must consider customer safety first.”
The ice cream shop says it's in desperate need of plastic surgery, but things will look exactly the same as they did when The Sopranos came along.
We don't know who bought the booth, but we doubt they paid for it with an envelope containing cash.