Word: camelot
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...then last week came Sotheby's yard sale of Jacqueline Kennedy's bric-a-brac. Jackie belonged to the founding myth of the '60s. Now the saint's relics of Camelot have turned to kitsch. The gavel-banging crassness of the sell-off may help bring Americans to that objectivity and even disillusionment necessary for what grief specialists refer to as "closure...
...mother. Lynda and Stewart Resnick, owners of the Franklin Mint Museum, based in Philadelphia, bid $211,500 for what looks like the same triple-strand necklace of simulated (read fake) pearls, offered at $700 to $900. Says she: "I'm a child of the '60s, and the John Kennedy Camelot years were the last time a lot of us were really innocent. That's what this whole auction brings back." She innocently adds that the Franklin Mint will probably replicate the pearls...
...late Friday afternoon, with the final session winding down and the supply of Jackie and Camelot memorabilia drying up, the feeding frenzy at Sotheby's reached a climax. Three modest cushions, assessed at $50 to $100, were snapped up for $25,300. When it was all over, the total proceeds from the auction, which the upper ranges of Sotheby's estimates would have placed at about $4 million, came to $34.5 million...
...Tiffany silver tape measure engraved with Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis' initials. The list goes on, each item far exceeding the expected sale price. Thus many who had made the trip to an auction house for the first time in their lives in the hopes of owning a piece of Camelot quickly saw their hopes outbid by the frenzied buyers. Bruce Wolmer, editor in chief of Art & Auction, predicts the Onassis sale will far exceed Sotheby's 1987 Duchess of Windsor jewelry sale, which brought in $50 million. Mrs. Onassis' jewelry goes on sale Wednesday night and includes a 40-carat diamond...
...other words, the Camelot garage sale has nothing of historical significance in it. Even the famed rocking chair, factory-made in North Carolina not so long ago, turns out--like the leg bone of St. Mark or the Holy Prepuce--to exist in at least two versions, one at the start of the auction and one, to catch the laggards, at the end; and there is no way to know which one the presidential backside spent more time in. Quite right too. Only aura will count with the bidders...