BUFFALO, N.Y. — April 8 brought an event of a lifetime.

“It’s been so great talking to people to say, 'where did you watch the eclipse? Wasn't it so much fun? What an amazing experience,'” said Therese Deutschlander, owner of Thin Ice Gift Shop and president of the board for the Elmwood Village Association.

What You Need To Know

  •  Groups are collecting eclipse glasses to redistribute to students in Latin America

  •  Thin Ice Gift Shop collection goes until end of April

  • Eclipse glasses must not be damged, and should have proper ISO marking on them

Eclipse mania hasn’t stopped just yet.

“People still want to commemorate it, if they didn’t get in [to the shop] over the weekend,” she explained, showing off their eclipse memorabilia. 

But the next eclipse passed through this area in 2144, which means you might not want to hang on to some of that memorabilia.

“That's something that we kind of thought about is, what's going to happen to all of these glasses after the eclipse,” Deutschlander said.

That's why she and her team found an alternative to throwing them out.

“There is a place in Utah that's collecting them and they're going to send them to South America because they're seeing the next [annular] eclipse," she explained. "So they're going to go to school-age children.”

Thin Ice Gift Shop put the call out on social media.

“It got shared, shared, shared, shared,” said Deutschlander.

It didn’t take long to see results.

“Initially we thought, 'oh, well, I'll just put out one of our Thin Ice bags and that'll be fine. Lightweight.' Nope,” she said. “Within one hour of the eclipse ending, we had 10 pounds of glasses.”

They already have hundreds of glasses. Some are singles and some came in batches.

“Everybody over-prepared for this," she said. "So if there's any groups or organizations or schools that didn't end up meeting the 5,000 that they ordered, they're just giving us the entire unopened cases.”

They’re taking glasses through the end of the month, and it’s not the only spot along the path of the eclipse at which they can be dropped off.

“It's no different than if you go to the movies and see a 3-D movie," Deutschlander explained. "I don't want to just throw those out, and so it's really great that that we can be a hub for it.”

They’ll make sure glasses aren’t damaged and have the proper ISO rating on them before shipping them off.

“I love the fact that students in Latin America are going to be wearing I Love New York glasses,” she said. “Just to kind of keep that momentum going of, 'this was amazing.' And we want you guys to experience it like we experienced it, so make sure that you're as prepared as we were.”

Once their collection is done, Thin Ice Gift Shop plans to team up with other groups collecting glasses. That way, they can have one big shipment, and work together to figure out payment for that.