Several years ago your humble writer was walking though midtown Manhattan when, turning onto 5th Avenue, he saw something that made him pause. In the window display case of Tiffany & Co. was the World Series trophy. I had long known that Tiffany’s made the trophy for both MLB and the NFL. It is just not something one sees everyday. Even better for me, although I obviously had no way of knowing it that early fall evening, it was the World Series trophy the Red Sox themselves would win a few weeks later. As you can imagine, it is one of those random events that has stayed with me.

The first three of the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl trophies. The team would add a fourth the year after this photo was taken.
In a story I have been loosely following for the past few months, I read today that another Tiffany creation–the original Lombardi trophy–has returned to Newark, New Jersey after a forty-seven year hiatus. Ulysses Grant Dietz, the gr, gr. grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, is the museum curator responsible for bringing it back. The Newark Museum is one of the great places in the New York Metropolitan area. Waking there from the PATH train, the observant walker sees vestiges of the city’s heyday in the architecture and public artwork. Among the many other things the city was know for was its silversmiths and jewelry makers. The Lombardi Trophy from Super Bowl I is part of a current exhibit on Newark’s history of precious metalsmithing.
The exhibit is not entirely coincidental. This year’s Super Bowl is going to be held in New Jersey at the stadium where the Giants and Jets play. Hence, the museum’s administrators figured they would have some kind of tie-in. Shooting high, they went for–and got–the Lombardi.
On the plane from Florida the other day I had a conversation about this with the man next to me. We could not understand why they are playing in an outdoor stadium in the Northeast in February. But they are.
No, I will not be attending the Super Bowl whatever the weather. I will be making the trek across the river to see the original Lombardi trophy along with the other treasures the museum has to offer.
(image/Globe199)