Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge — or at least its lights?

A Queens junk flipper found himself on a 15-month odyssey trying to sell lighting fixtures that had once graced the legendary Brooklyn Bridge.

“Normally I only buy things that have a model number, things I can look up exactly what they’re worth, what they’ll go for,” Joe Pilato, 37, who sold the wares for roughly $13,000, told The Post. “But this one…I was like, ‘This is too weird not to try.’”

In November 2021, Pilato came across a notice for a city-run auction for mercury vapor lights that had illuminated the famed span from the late 1990s to 2019, ultimately nabbing 123 of the fixtures for around $35 a pop.

Pilato learned afterward, however, that any potentially interested buyers he had on the line had backed out. So he quickly pivoted to an all-out, hail Mary marketing campaign. 

Pilato fired off at least 1,800, mostly unreturned emails soliciting the lights to marinas, bridge worker unions, a Brooklyn Bridge historian, and business improvement districts. He tried to sell the fixtures at an auction with a city antiques theme — but the effort ultimately fell through.

He even went to the Brooklyn Bridge in person, holding a sign advertising his Big Apple artifacts for sale.  

“This is the only [resell] where I was actively pursuing buyers, kind of yelling into the dark here,” he said.

Pilato’s scattershot strategy, however, eventually began to show glimmers of promise, with appetizing institution Russ & Daughters picking up a pair.

“While none of us knew how or where we would incorporate these literal pieces of history into our shops, we loved the idea of owning a piece of the connection between the two boroughs,” said director of operations Tim Von Hollweg. 

A Manhattan Bridge die-hard, who had an image of the rival span tattooed on his arm, also bought a light, as did a homesick couple in Paris.

The lights saga finally ended in February, when Pilato sold his last 17 bulbs to a billiards shop. The most he ever got for a single lighting fixture was $200, and he estimated that he netted around $7,000 profit pre-tax after factoring storage and moving costs. 

Evan Blum, owner of the Demolition Depot in East Harlem, was awe-struck by Pilato’s marketing skills — in particular because he poo-pooed the bridge’s lighting fixtures as having “no historical significance” nor any “ornamental quality.” 

“He’s a genius in that he was able to sell these things,” Blum, 69, said. “We got to put him in the junk Hall of Fame.”