This lot features the inaugural Poi Bowl Trophy from 1936. The Poi Bowl is a now-defunct college football bowl game played in Honolulu Hawaii at Honolulu Stadium. Played in early January from 1936 to 1939 the Poi Bowl was renamed the Pineapple Bowl in 1940. The University of Hawaii at Manoa invited teams from the Pacific Coast Conference to participate in the Poi Bowl every year except for 1937 when they scheduled a game versus the Honolulu All-Stars. In the 1936 game USC trounced Hawaii by the score of 38-6.

According to the consignor the trophy was obtained directly from the estate of Gil Kuhn who died in 2006. Kuhn was a three-year (1934-36) letterman football center at USC under legendary head coach Howard Jones and captained the Trojans during his senior year of '36. He was also the first USC player ever drafted into the NFL but never played a single down in the league. Instead he went on to become a war hero rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force. In 1961 he was even named to the Sports Illustrated Silver Anniversary All-America team of 1936.

The beautifully carved and persevered Poi Bowl Trophy is a wooden bowl that measures 11 in diameter and 4.5 high and sports a specially engraved silver plaque on the front that reads: Presented to the University of Southern California from the Associated Students University of Hawaii on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Royal Hawaiian Classic An Exchange of Relationship Across the Pacific Jan. 1 1936 Honolulu T.H. Just above the plaque is a slightly deteriorating sticker showing the glorious State Seal of Hawaii.