More Kennedy-Crazed Sale Prices -- Golf Clubs, Fake Pearls Go For Many Times Estimated Worth

NEW YORK - A million dollars for golf clubs? Par for the course if they belonged to John Kennedy.

A set of woods for $772,500 and a set of irons for $387,500 topped the price list yesterday on the third day of the Sotheby auction house's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate sale.

Today, a poignant inscription from President Kennedy's widow a month after his murder helped produce another eye-popping price.

"For Mommy and Uncle Hugh, Jack was going to give you this for Christmas - Please accept it now from me - With all my love, Jackie, December 1963," she wrote on the present, a bound collection of presidential addresses. It sold for $110,000 - more than 20 times the pre-auction estimate.

The book was a gift to her mother and stepfather.

There was also "a record for a record," joked Sotheby's auctioneer David Redden - a winning $6,000 bid for a 45 rpm recording of Kennedy's inaugural address in January 1961. It was valued at $200.

Bids for auction items have come from all over: Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens phoned in during a game in Boston yesterday in an unsuccessful attempt to buy the golf clubs.

Clemens, an avid golfer and fan of the late president, wasn't scheduled to pitch yesterday and got permission to call in from the team doctor's office. His top bid reached $121,000, far short of the winning bids.

"My pulse was racing," Clemens said. "They told me there were 11 guys left, and then it just went like Dorothy's house falling out of the sky."

Amid gasps and applause, four MacGregor woods and a Wilson 2 wood were hammered down for $772,500, while a set of Ben Hogan irons sold for $387,500. Both sets of clubs, which had estimated values of $900 each, were contained in golf bags with the logo "JFK, Washington, D.C."

"You never know," said auctioneer William W. Stahl Jr., amazed, as the bids for the woods mounted.

Both the purchasers preferred to remain anonymous, Sotheby's said.

In addition, the president's Robot K-44 putter went for $63,000. His MacGregor putter, called "the crook," went for $65,750 to James F. Heinz Jr., an insurance executive from Chicago who collects historic golf clubs. He was in London but gave bids by phone to Don Mudd, his representative in the auction room.

Most players these days favor metal woods, and at the discount price for the popular Great Big Bertha titanium driver, the buyer of John Kennedy's woods could have bought 1,931 high-tech clubs.

The running total after the third day of the four-day auction was $28,311,666. Sotheby's conservative estimate for the entire auction had been $3.3 million to $4.6 million.

In other bidding wars, Jacqueline Onassis' saddles, estimated at $300 to $500 each, sold for $90,500, $46,000 and $34,500.

During yesterday morning's session, costume-jewelry pieces like glass bead necklaces and fake diamond brooches were sold for thousands of dollars each.

The Franklin Mint, which makes collectibles, bought the $211,500 faux pearls worn by Jackie in a 1962 photo of her with a young John F. Kennedy Jr. The necklace, estimated to sell at about $600, will be displayed in the company's museum in suburban Philadelphia. A company spokesman said there are no plans to reproduce it.

Sotheby's based its presale estimates on the intrinsic value of the objects - few of which were antiques or unusual works of art - rather than on who owned them. The prices include Sotheby's commission, which is 15 percent of the first $50,000 and 10 percent of anything above that amount.

Onassis died in 1994. Her will directed her children, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr., and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, to choose whatever they wanted from her possessions, then sell the rest. Proceeds were to go to her estate.

The black stone, beaded double-strand necklace of costume jewelry that Jacqueline Kennedy wore when her husband announced his candidacy for president and when she met French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris in 1961, was purchased yesterday by French clothing-company figure Gerard Darel for $101,500.

Through a translator, Danielle Darel, owner of the company, said it would be worn by models in print and TV ads. The company's slogan is "the story of charm," she said, and Onassis was "the representation of charm." Information from The Washington Post is included in this report.