Date: Fri 27-Nov-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

JFK

Full Text:

Last Check Of John F. Kennedy

NEW YORK CITY -- One of the last personal checks signed by President John F.

Kennedy was sold at auction on November 10 by R.M. Smythe & Co., Inc., a New

York auction house.

The rare surviving blank check, on the President's personal account at the 55

West Street branch of The National City Bank of New York (now Citibank), was

one of three signed in preparation for President Kennedy's fateful trip to

Dallas in November 1963, and the only one to come to public auction.

John E. Herzog, chairman of the Museum of American Financial History, bought

the check for the museum for $16,000. It had been part of the collection of

Sanford Mock of Beverly Hills, Calif. (Prices do not include the 12 percent

buyer's premium charged.)

Among other major sales was a 1720 document signed by Sir Isaac Newton,

investing œ6,000 in the South Sea Company just before its collapse, for

$32,500; and two Thomas Jefferson autographs -- one as Secretary of State on

the 1792 Act of Congress extending the Assumption Act ($18,000), and the other

on a rare personal check for $8,800. Bidding on these items was extremely

heavy, with all selling for well beyond expectations.

A major section of the sale was devoted to documents of Texas history,

including a William B. Travis letter from 1834 and an 1835 broadside in

Spanish calling the citizens to arms against Mexico, each of which sold for

$16,000. A collection of autographs of Texas patriots, politicians and signers

of the Texas Declaration of Independence sold for $9,100.

Other significant lots included a remarkable album of Civil War era autographs

collected by a Buffalo teenager for $12,000; a Halcyon Days porcelain pillbox,

one of a number commissioned and inscribed by Princess Diana to be given as

Christmas gifts in 1988, $4,750; and a 1785 pay warrant for a soldier who had

served in the Revolution, signed by Benjamin Franklin as president of the

Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania, $10,000.

Also, a financial manuscript document signed by Paul Revere, $9,500; an

extremely unusual double portrait caricature of Enrico Caruso being examined

by a physician, $2,900; and a rare Union soldier's autograph letter giving

vivid details of the Battle of Antietam, $2,600.