FANS of the Kennedy clan swarmed Sotheby’s saleroom in New York yesterday for what could be their last chance to grab a piece of Camelot.
Hundreds turned up at the start of the three-day sale to bid on belongings ranging from a doorstop to one of President John Kennedy’s rocking chairs, prescribed by a doctor for his bad back.
Jean-Paul Morre, a property agent, travelled from Belgium to be the first in line outside the auction house. He went away happy after successfully bidding $1,900 (£1,000) for a glass goblet engraved with a whaling scene. “I am fascinated by the Kennedys. I have been to Dallas and all those sort of things,” he said. “I just wanted something authentic.”
The 600 lots were put up for auction by President Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, after her brother, John, died in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999.
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She wrote in the catalogue: “After my mother died in 1994, my brother and I were faced with the task of deciding what to do with her possessions, and after careful consideration we sold some of them in 1996.
“Following the death of my brother, I found myself again with more houses and belongings than I could possibly use or enjoy.”
The sale of the estate Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis raised $34.5 million. The latest sale had been estimated to make $1 million but now looks as though it will make three times that.
Hugh Hildesley, one of the auctioneers, said: “This is probably the last time to get a piece of Camelot.”
The rocking chair fetched the highest price, at $96,000. It was sold to a telephone bidder. “It’s an icon of President Kennedy,” Mr Hildesley said. “He was so often photographed in those chairs.”
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Skippy Weinstein, a New York trial lawyer, bought a red wool blanket emblazoned with the monogram JFK for $18,000. “I was a young gofer in Washington as a law student working in the Senate offices. Periodically we would see him.”
Anita Beeber, a high school counsellor from New York, was outbid on a cast-iron doorstop in the form of a flower basket. It was valued at $60 to $80 but sold for $4,000.
Other items included books about Washington DC, an Elvis Presley album and chintz armchairs.A seascape painted by Ogden Pleissner sold for $37,200. Three portraits by Jane Anthony Davis in watercolour, dating from 1845, fetched $25,200.
Coming up for sale is a photograph of an unidentified naked woman running from the camera by a swimming pool, by an unknown photographer.
The image bears some resemblance to Mrs Kennedy Onassis. The family insists that it is not her.