July 20 (Bloomberg) -- The green umbrella has the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. logo silk-screened on it and can stand up to winds as strong as 80 m.p.h. -- and it’s yours for only $20.

Since the beginning of July, bankrupt Lehman has been holding a garage sale on EBay Inc., hawking thousands of items originally produced as freebies for the firm’s clients and employees.

The merchandise ranges from a $25 canvas duffel bag to a Vineyard Vines silk tie printed with the “LEH” ticker symbol for $34.99. All can be found at “EBay’s Official Lehman Brothers Store.” The tag line is “Own a Piece of History.”

Lehman filed the biggest U.S. bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008, with assets of $639 billion. Following its collapse, about 700 hedge funds and investment firms lost control of $23 billion in assets.

Proceeds from the EBay sale will go to creditors. Lehman Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal has said the firm owes as much as $250 billion. Lehman had a market value of $45 billion at its stock-market peak in February 2007.

“We are really excited to be able to offer this to the public because there is a demand,” said Lehman spokeswoman Kimberly Macleod in a telephone interview.

In March, Lehman negotiated the return of thousands of these logoed knickknacks that were mistakenly transferred to Barclays Plc through the sale of the bankrupt securities firm’s brokerage unit. Barclays, the third-biggest U.K. bank by assets, paid $1.75 billion for Lehman’s North American brokerage and real estate in September.

Retail Shop

Lehman will open a retail shop next week at its 1271 Sixth Ave. office in Manhattan to sell similar branded merchandise to employees, Macleod said.

Items online are sold outright, not through an auction, although sacked Lehman employees did offer memorabilia on EBay after the bankruptcy last year. Macleod said 22,594 Lehman staffers lost their jobs from a total workforce of 25,000 before the bankruptcy.

About 10,000 employees at Lehman’s brokerage were hired by Barclays, and around 8,000 employees were hired by Nomura Holdings Inc. with the sale of Lehman’s European and Asia businesses.

So far, top sellers among the 75 items currently available are the duffel bag and umbrella. New products are added daily. Supplies are limited to what is in Lehman’s warehouse.

“They will never be made again, and they are available until we run out,” Macleod said.

Rattles, Windbreakers

For the trust-fund baby who no longer has a trust fund, there’s a silver-plated rattle at $14.99 or a teddy bear wearing a sweater emblazoned “Lehman Brothers,” at $15. The unemployed with less stringent wardrobe needs will appreciate logo-stitched navy Nike windbreakers for $29.99, peach golf shirts for $24.99 and a set of four white baseball hats for $19.99.

Lehman’s sale may be a smart source for ironic gifts, but probably not for investors looking for collectibles likely to appreciate in value. “I don’t see any longevity in this stuff,” said Marsha Dixey, consignment director at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas. “Use it because you like it. If you want to put it away, don’t expect to retire on it.”

Leena Akhtar, the exhibits and archive director at the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street, agrees that Lehman bags and caps may not accrue much financial value.

“There’s always a surge of interest in things right after an event,” said Akhtar. “Long term, I don’t think they will have value.”

She said certain items might hold up over time. She recently accepted a donation of a group of eight Lucite Lehman tombstones, or deal commemoratives, that are currently on display in the museum’s concourse. “In terms of artifacts, they are signifiers,” she said.

To contact the reporter on the story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com;

Last Updated: July 20, 2009 17:04 EDT