Bits Of Camelot Prove Most Alluring -- Onassis' 40-Carat Engagement Ring To Kennedy's Widow Is Auction's Top Seller So Far At $2. 58 Million

Thirty years later, Camelot still outdraws Skorpios.

On Day 2 of the auction of the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - the woman who was married to the world's most powerful man, and later to one of its richest - the memorabilia of President John F. Kennedy and his times outsold even the huge gems Aristotle Onassis showered on his famous wife.

Audiences and bidders in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago gasped and cheered throughout the day yesterday, the second day of the four-day event that has so far raised $20.5 million.

The day brought hundreds of high prices and two moments of high drama: when an unidentified European museum bought the 18th-century desk that President Kennedy used to sign the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty for $1,432,500; and when the founders of Weight Watchers bought, on behalf of an unnamed friend, the 40-carat marquise diamond that was Onassis' engagement ring to the woman he married on his private island of Skorpios in 1968.

The ring, at $2.58 million the single costliest lot among more than 1,000 in the auction, brought more than four times its top $600,000 estimate.

But the JFK desk sold for more than 40 times its highest estimate of $30,000 - typical of the eager sentiment that buyers have shown for anything related to the assassinated president and his brief, shining moment on the nation's stage.

This morning, a triple strand of fake pearls (presale estimate: $500 to $700) immortalized by a photograph of a young JFK Jr. grasping them as his mother laughs sold for $211,500.

Bidders raised paddles all over the salesroom at Sotheby's. But the winning bid came by phone from the Franklin Mint, a suburban Philadelphia company that specializes in collectible reproductions and promised to put the pearls on display in its museum.

Still, diamonds are forever.

On the crying of Lot 453, the last piece of the day, auction-goers cheered as the ferocious bidding for the diamond ring leaped by six-figure increments to hit a million, and cheered again as it crept to its selling price.

`Don't be shy'

"This is your last chance to be part of the mystique," said John Bloch, the auctioneer and head of Sotheby's jewelry department. "Don't be shy."

Earlier in the day, a 47-karat ring of pink Kunzite and diamonds, bought by Kennedy for his wife but never given to her (the rumor swept the Beverly Hills, Calif., showroom that he was killed before he could) brought an astounding $415,000.

After the shock of huge prices wore off - a set of ordinary wicker baskets fetched $9,200, and the catalogue's cheapest item, a reproduction of an etching of Washington, D.C., valued at $20 to $30, brought $2,070 - the Los Angeles audience, in Sotheby's Beverly Hills offices, laughed as much as it cheered.

They listened to Sotheby's in New York via speaker and watched the screen as a photograph of each lot was shown during the bidding. It was rather like Home Shopping Club - if your home is on Park Avenue, or Rodeo Drive.

"Super Bowl of auctions"

"The Super Bowl of auctions," said Lita Colis Cohen, the editor of Maine Antiques Digest, who sat quietly in New York as bids cascaded in by phone and fax and from eager collectors in the audience.

Prices astonished many who had been attracted by Sotheby's fairly modest catalogue estimates, which were based on the actual value of the items without considering their "provenance" - their ownership by Jackie Onassis.

The pattern was clear from the first item of the day's second session, when a slightly dented gold "minaudiere" evening clutch that Mrs. Onassis carried during the White House years went from zero to 60 - $60,000, 20 times its top estimate - in a matter of seconds.

"Oblivious consumption," said a casually dressed man near the back of the Beverly Hills session, shaking his head, and pretending to tear up his bidding "paddle" No. 271 in despair.

"That's New York money," said the man behind him.

Much of the second half of the day was devoted to jewelry - including great masses of Greek-designed gold, and wedding and engagement gifts from Onassis to his bride, who became known the world over as "Jackie O."

After Onassis died in 1994, her will directed that her children, Caroline and John Jr., and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, could choose from her possessions, then sell the rest.

Proceeds were to go to her estate.

Information from Associated Press is included in this report.