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Area dinosaur hunters are out of luck after the last of St. Louis’ green apatosauruses headed west this month.

The men looking for the creatures — and men, they invariably seem to be — aren’t paleontologists. They’re collectors of gas station memorabilia searching for their Holy Grail — fiberglass statues of the Sinclair Oil Corp. mascot.

Sinclair, based in Salt Lake City, announced last year it would sell off all its company-owned stations. Thousands of Sinclair-branded stations would remain, but they would be owned by operators who buy fuel from Sinclair.

Not so much in St. Louis. Sinclair recently sold its last 13 company-owned stations here to Earth City-based Western Oil. According to a Sinclair official, Western Oil wanted to buy fuel for the stations from ConocoPhillips, which operates a refinery in Wood River.

After rebranding of the stations started early this month, a local preservation blog — beltstl.com — broke news of the dinos’ disappearance. And since then, Sinclair enthusiasts have been ramping up their searches.

Instead of the trowels and shovels favored by fossil hunters, these dinophiles use cash. For instance, one recently offered a cash bribe and free lunch to this reporter, in exchange for a heads-up on where a Sinclair statue might be found. That tactic is hardly unusual.

"A guy told me if I could locate the dinosaur, he’d pay me $1,000," said Janice Brannen, a clerk at the Sinclair station at 4355 South Broadway in St. Louis. Brannen said people often stopped at the Broadway station just to climb the statue and snap photos of it.

She said she got the $1,000 offer just days after a Sinclair crew removed the station’s dinosaur. Brannen said the customer wanted to move the statue to his farm: "He said it would fit in nice there."

Of course, some might disagree. Nick Kirkou thinks the apatosaurus would be most comfortable pool-side at his Sunset Hills home.

Kirkou, who owns the Crestwood-based Ontime Express courier service, has been trying to buy a Sinclair dinosaur for about two years. "It’s not as easy as it sounds," he said.

On its website, Sinclair sells dino-themed inflatables, plush toys, puppets and temporary tattoos. The company mascot has at least four fan pages on Facebook. Locations of the statues are listed in guidebooks as roadside attractions; a California sculptor sells replicas over the Internet for $1,650.

But buying a genuine Sinclair statue is a good deal more difficult.

Especially in St. Louis. The dinosaurs have been dwindling for years as Sinclair’s presence here decreased. There used to be a dino statue at a Sinclair at Big Bend Road and South Holmes Avenue, but that station and several others closed years ago.

The dinosaur at 4205 Butler Hill Road in South County disappeared about four weeks ago. The sudden departure didn’t surprise Greg Hoelting, another dinosaur hunter whose prey has eluded him for years.

"They always just vanish," said Hoelting, of Weldon Spring. "It’s because there’s a big demand for them — they can sell for three or four thousand dollars."

Hoelting, a construction worker, has been trying to buy a dino for years, and only once did he come close, but the seller wouldn’t ship the beast from Albuquerque, N.M.

That part of the country is still Sinclair country. Jack Barger, a company spokesman, said Sinclair now operates almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River.

Barger said the company usually removes dinosaur statues before selling a station. He didn’t know the exact whereabouts of the St. Louis statues, but he suspects they’re long gone. "They’ve probably been put on a truck and moved out of town where they can be redeployed," he said.

The statues might be gone, but at least one Sinclair-branded station will remain in St. Louis. And its operator is a bit of a dinosaur in his own right.

George Wiesehan, 80, been working at Sinclair stations since he was 10 years old, first at his father’s station, on South Grand Boulevard across from the old YMCA. Since 1952, he has worked at the station he owns at the corner of Chippewa Street and Giles Avenue.

His franchise still displays the company’s dinosaur logo.

"We’re the only Sinclair left in St. Louis — and we’ll stay that way as long as they’ll still sell us fuel," Wiesehan said.

But there’s no dinosaur statue at the station because Wiesehan never felt tempted to buy one from the company. "Why would I spend thousands of dollars for a piece of junk that people are going to mess with?"

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Filed under: money by Finance Boss