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Pearls of wisdom
Country Life UK
|June 21, 2023
Pearls of wisdom What Jackie Kennedy’s $35 necklace tells us about price and value
THOMAS WOODHAM-SMITH, co-founder of the Treasure House Fair that opens its doors in the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea tomorrow, recently related a story about a necklace of fake pearls that was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in 1996 for $212,000, a 6,000% increase on the $35 paid at Bergdorf Goodman in the 1950s. Better still, the necklace was later copied 130,000 times, grossing the owners a total of $26 million, and it is now stashed away in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. The reason for its mesmeric appeal? It formerly belonged to Jackie Kennedy.
This story is from the June 21, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
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