Uri bends a Royal spoon

THE BOTTOM LINE

New York, Feb. 22: Psychic Uri Geller paid $1,700 on Saturday for a silver medicine spoon that once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor during the third day of a marathon sale of items once owned by the duke and duchess.

Mr Geller, who bought the 1917 spoon in a telephone bid from London, will add it to his collection of more than 5,000 spoons he keeps affixed to a 1977 Cadillac in England. Mr Geller became famous for bending spoons using his psychic powers. The Duke of Windsor gave the spoon to Ms Wallis Simpson during a cruise in September 1934.

A portrait of former Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which had an estimate of $200 to $400, fetched the highest price on Saturday morning, going for a whopping $34,000 to a buyer on the auction floor who declined to be identified, said Sotheby’s spokeswoman Kate Drury.

A highlight of the nine-day auction was expected to come later on Saturday when the desk at which King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the American divorcee goes up for bid.

The 1755 George III mahogany library table was expected to sell for up to $50,000, although items in the fabled Windsor collection have been selling for three times, and more, their pre-sale estimates. Eight silver jacks belonging to the duke sold to Ripley Entertainment Inc. for $11,000 before commissions and taxes. The silver jacks made by Smith and Smith from Attleboro, Massachusetts, were given to the couple by US journalist Edward R. Morrow during a 1956 television appearance on the programme Person to Person.

“We came here hoping to get some of the quirkier, weirder things in this auction,” said Mr Edward Meyers, a company vice-president. “Anything that shows a little bit of decadence.”

Mr Meyers said the jacks along with other items bought earlier this week will be exhibited in one of the 26 Ripley’s museums worldwide.

The auction house has brought in more than $3.5 million so far from the items once belonging to the couple.

Edward Murrow died in 1972, his widow 14 years later. She left the estate to charity, and it was bought in 1986 by Mohammed Al-Fayed.

The auction had originally been scheduled for September, but was postponed because of the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed in a Paris crash.

Proceeds will go to the Dodi Fayed International Charitable Foundation, to benefit children’s charities supported by him and the princess. (AP)