September 18, 2023
@thunderbirdsalvage/Facebook
Thunderbird Salvage is selling this 10-piece dining set formerly owned by Jerry Blavat. The asking price is $5,000.
Fans of the late Jerry Blavat now can own a piece of the legendary disc jockey's former home.
The Fishtown secondhand shop Thunderbird Salvage is selling a 10-piece dining set that once belonged to the "Geator With the Heator." It includes eight high-back chairs from the Italian furniture maker Costantini Pietro and two lacquered wooden tables with glass tops made in France. The smaller table features three built-in drawers and two cabinets. Thunderbird Salvage is currently asking for $5,000 for the set.
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A 7-foot cactus that belonged to Blavat also was for sale, but it has since sold for $500.
George Mathes, owner of Thunderbird Salvage, said he acquired the pieces after the Barry S. Slosberg auction house passed on the set due to the moving costs. The auctioneers felt it posed too much of a risk, he said, and offered everything still in Blavat's former Society Hill Towers condo to him. Along with the dining set and cactus, Mathes claimed a king-size mattress and inversion table, which he does not plan to sell.
"It's my risk now," Mathes laughed.
No offers for the dining set had come in as of Monday afternoon, Mathes said. But a sale is currently pending on Blavat's old condo, which listed in April for $935,000. The dining set is visible briefly in a realtor's video tour of the estate.
Blavat died in January from a rare neuromuscular disease. He was 82. Over the course of his nearly seven-decade career, he danced on "American Bandstand," hosted numerous radio shows and spun records at his Jersey Shore nightclub Memories in Margate. The portion of Broad Street between Lombard and South streets was renamed Jerry Blavat Way in his honor in June.
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