A Spree at the Jackie O,000,000 Auction

The auction of the possessions of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis got off to a spectacular start Tuesday with high drama and higher prices--including $442,500 for a rocking chair used by President Kennedy--as clamoring collectors bought merchandise totaling $4.5 million.

The enduring mystique of Camelot, plus the desire to own memorabilia from one of the world’s most admired women, added up to big profits both for Sotheby’s, which conducted the sale, and Mrs. Onassis’ two children, who will use the money to help pay estate taxes.

There were gasps and cheers as the prices soared: $85,000 for a highchair once used in the White House by John F. Kennedy Jr., $33,350 for a small footstool Caroline Kennedy once used to climb to a window seat in her White House bedroom, $167,500 for the piano Mrs. Onassis kept in her 5th Avenue apartment.

A walnut cigar humidor, which was given to the president by comedian Milton Berle, went for $574,500. The winning bidder was Marvin Shaken, publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine.

“JFK was a great man and a great cigar smoker,” he said.

“I think it even surpassed our wildest expectations,” said Sotheby’s president, Diana Brooks. “The sale started and it just took off by itself.”

Mrs. Onassis discussed the idea of an auction with her lawyer Alexander Forger and her children in the months before her death in May 1994. She knew she was dying of cancer, and over a lifetime she had filled several homes and a good portion of a warehouse with her possessions.

She knew the value of provenance, that objects owned by famous people could fetch far higher prices than the same items owned by nonentities.

Was she ever right!

As celebrities crowded Sotheby’s auction galleries on the upper East Side of Manhattan and viewed the procession of objects, some normally ordinary, comedian Joan Rivers summed up the proceedings: The auction was like the arrival of Halley’s comet.

Mrs. Onassis’ possessions, 1,195 lots from her estate, will be sold over four days.

Even before the first item went before the public, interest was intense. More than 85,000 catalogs were sold at $90 for hardcover and $45 for paperback. More than 70,000 advance bids were received from an eager public.

The oak rocking chair that went for $442,500 was manufactured in North Carolina and had been estimated in the catalog to bring perhaps $5,000.

Before the sale, Sotheby’s executives admitted candidly they wouldn’t even be selling the rocker if it hadn’t belonged to the late president.

Auction experts said the catalog’s estimates were deliberately understated and Sotheby’s appraisers all along expected far higher prices.

Their expectations were more than realized.

Anything that was in the White House automatically boosted prices. A Louis XV-style silver-plated lamp sold for $48,875--light-years ahead of its $900 estimate. Caroline Kennedy’s rocking horse from the White House nursery went for $85,000.

Most of the buyers remained anonymous.

More than 1,500 people crowded Sotheby’s in New York. Other bidders gathered in Los Angeles and Chicago, where they sent in telephone bids.

The art that Mrs. Onassis collected also brought high prices, including $222,500 for “Head of an Arab,” a painting by John Singer Sargent, and $43,700 for a Jamie Wyeth lithograph of President Kennedy in a sailboat. Another work by Sargent, “Venetian Girl,” brought $156,500.

Singer Jimmy Buffet purchased the lithograph.

Today, the jewelry that Mrs. Onassis owned goes on sale. It includes a 40-carat diamond that Aristotle Onassis presented her as an engagement gift.

The Kennedy children donated many of the items with historical significance that their mother collected to the Kennedy Library in Boston. In addition, they kept many possessions for themselves, Forger said.

Among the items the Kennedy children donated to the library were 40,000 photographs, 28,000 manuscripts and their mother’s wedding gown.