The sale of late British leader Margaret
Thatcher’s possessions has raised 3.3 million pounds (4.5 million euros, 5
million US dollars), auction house Christie’s said on Tuesday.
A model of an American bald eagle given to Thatcher by close ally and
former US president Ronald Reagan fetched the highest price for an
individual
item at 266,500 pounds after a flurry of bidding in person, online and by
phone.
The model, with the message “with best wishes from Ronald Reagan”, was sold
to an online buyer and had been given a top estimated sale price of 8,000
pounds at
the London auction.
The former British prime minister’s famous red ministerial box was the next
most expensive item, selling for 242,500 pounds. Initially expected to sell
for between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds, auctioneer Jussi Pykkanen finalised the
sale to an unidentified buyer with a bang of his hammer, to applause from
the audience.
The box, in which the late Conservative leader would carry confidential
documents, is one of the most iconic of around 200 of Thatcher’s personal
belongings offered for sale by Christie’s.
Many have been advertised online since December 3, with the sale due to end
at 1500 GMT Wednesday. Items which belonged to the “Iron Lady”, Britain’s
first female prime
minister, have often sold better than the clothes she wore.
A sheet featuring a typed prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi and
signed by Thatcher, which she quoted on first arriving in Downing Street in
1979, sold for 37,500 pounds, despite an initial estimate of between 600
and 900 pounds.
Her blue velvet wedding dress, valued at between 10,000 pounds and 15,000
pounds, went
for 25,000 pounds to a buyer in Oman. Some 200 buyers followed the sale
online and many others by telephone, including prospective bidders from
Austria, South Korea, Australia and the
United States.
The sale of Thatcher’s clothes revealed her “secret passion” for fashion,
curator Meredith Etherington-Smith said.
Thatcher was the daughter of a seamstress and as a child she and her sister
made their own clothes, she added.
“When she became the first woman prime minister, she used clothes as a
way
of emphasising her power,” Etherington-Smith explained last week.
“Every time there was a photo opportunity, she was beautifully dressed,
immaculately coiffured, with a nice handbag, and she looked what she was: a
powerful person.”
Thatcher led the country from 1979 to 1990. She died in 2013 at the age
of
87. (AFP)