$442,500 For Jfk's Rocker -- Onassis Auction Sells History To Highest Bidder

NEW YORK - The hide-covered rocking horse that Caroline Kennedy rode in the White House nursery sold for $86,250.

One of John F. Kennedy's oak rocking chairs sold for $442,500.

And a polished walnut humidor that comic Milton Berle gave JFK in 1961 was the highest-selling item. Marvin Shanken, editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado, took it home for $574,500.

Sotheby's yesterday began a four-day auction of 5,500 belongings of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Before a crowd that gasped as prices soared, items sold for well over presale estimates. The humidor, for example, had been expected to bring $2,000 or so.

The sale will likely surpass Sotheby's 1987 Duchess of Windsor jewelry sale, which brought in $50 million.

Last night's session tallied close to $4.5 million, with astronomical prices for:

-- The baby grand piano from her Fifth Avenue apartment, $167,500.

-- Her monogrammed silver tape measure from Tiffany, $48,875.

-- A leather Stetson hatbox with a tag that read "The President," $31,625 - more than 100 times the presale estimate.

The prices include Sotheby's commission of 15 percent of the first $50,000 and 10 percent beyond that.

From Los Angeles, Berle bid on the humidor, inscribed: "To J.F.K. Good Health - Good Smoking, Milton Berle - 1/20/61."

"I had it made for him at Alfred Dunhill; it cost $600, which was quite expensive at the time," Berle, 87, recalled. "I'd like to

get it back."

But it was not to be.

Today's session brought spectacular prices for the mundane:

-- A set of wicker baskets, $9,200. The presale estimate was $200.

-- A decorated plant-holder from the former first lady's White House dressing room, $12,650. The presale price was $150.

-- A metal plate engraved with the initials "JLBK," valued at $50 to $100, the subject of frenzied bidding, went for $25,300.

-- Tiny Chinese porcelain dishes, valued at $100 to $150 each, $6,900 apiece. Before the sale, many fans of modest income had expressed the hope that the china would remain within their means.

-- A nine-inch statue of a white mouse on a corn cob, $11,000. It was expected to fetch $700 to $1,000.

-- Her grade-school French textbook, $42,550. It was originally estimated to sell for about $500. The book has a tattered red cover and doodles - presumably scratched by the child Jacqueline.

-- Salt-and-pepper shakers with the monogram "K," $18,400.

The sale continues through Friday, with Onassis' jewelry on sale later today - including a 40-carat diamond she received as an engagement gift from Aristotle Onassis.

Items to be sold later in the week include JFK's golf clubs and Onassis' 1992 BMW.

Close to 30,000 fans and gawkers have passed through Sotheby's since Friday, selected via lottery from those who purchased the phone-book-size catalog, which has sold more than 85,000 copies at $90 in hard cover and $45 in paperback.

In addition to the 1,500 invited bidders in the Manhattan auction house, about 300 were hooked up by phone from the Chicago and Los Angeles offices of Sotheby's, which received 70,000 written or faxed bids.

Among last night's invited bidders were former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, comic and shopper Joan Rivers and Nancy Tuckerman, Onassis's longtime confidante and social secretary who wrote the introduction to the catalog.

Most buyers remained anonymous.

Some did not. Singer Jimmy Buffett bought over the phone a Jamie Wyeth lithograph of the president in a sailboat for $43,700.

Despite the spectacle, those close to the former first lady say it's an event she envisioned and approved before her death from cancer two years ago.

"A lot of people say, `She was such a private person; she would have hated this.' Quite the contrary," says attorney Alexander Forger, her longtime friend and co-executor of the estate with her companion, Maurice Tempelsman.

Her concerns were pragmatic. Onassis' possessions filled not only her New York apartment but her home in New Jersey's hunt country and her Martha's Vineyard estate. Many other items were in storage.

She knew her children, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr., "wouldn't be able to or want to retain it all," explains Forger, president of Washington-based Legal Services Corp. "And she anticipated that everything wasn't the quality to go to the Kennedy Library."

The Kennedy children donated to the library most of the historically valuable material: 4,000 photographs, 38,000 manuscripts, the suit in which she led the 1962 televised White House tour and her wedding gown. Profits from sales of the catalog, which Forger expects to reach several million dollars, are earmarked for the library.

Onassis expected her children to "select what they wanted for their own use and memories, and for the grandchildren. The balance would be sold," Forger says.

The proceeds will help her children pay federal and New York estate taxes, which together will amount to a 60 percent levy. Onassis' estate is valued (before the auction) at $45 million to $50 million, Forger says.

Information from Associated Press and USA Today is included in this report.

Other items Here is a sample of other auctioned items.

Mahogany 12-inch footstool used by Caroline Kennedy in the White House, $33,350.

Caroline's childhood rocking horse, $86,250.

Slant-front desk owned by Jackie's father, $69,000.

Lamp used in the White House, $48,875