Lee Harvey Oswald's gold wedding band, which he left in a cup on the dresser as he headed to work at the Texas School Book Depository the morning of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, sold at auction on Thursday for $108,000.
The ring that belonged to the man who is believed to have killed Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was among nearly 300 items linked to the president auctioned by RR Auction in Boston.
The New Hampshire-based auction house said that Oswald's ring, which has a tiny hammer and sickle engraved on the inside of the band, was sold to a buyer from Texas who wished to remain anonymous.
Relatively recently, Oswald's widow, Marina Oswald Porter, recovered the ring, which apparently sat forgotten for decades in the files of a Fort Worth lawyer who once did work for her. Accompanying the ring is a five-page handwritten letter dated May 5, 2013, in which Porter writes: "At this time of my life I don't wish to have Lee's ring in my possession because symbolically I want to let go of my past that is connecting with Nov. 22, 1963."
At her request, the auction house did not release the full contents of the letter, in which Porter documents the history of the ring -- from its purchase in the Soviet city of Minsk, Belarus, before their April, 30, 1961, wedding, to being left on the dresser at her friend Ruth Paine's home, where she and their children were living when Kennedy was killed.
With the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination coming up in November, the auction house gathered items ranging from Kennedy's personal belongings to Oswald's Marine Corps rifle score book, which sold for $54,000.
Another auction item, the sixth-floor window from the school book depository believed to have served as Oswald's sniper perch, did not sell. The window was removed weeks after the assassination.
Other items of note listed by the auction house sold as follows:
- The white 1963 Lincoln Continental used to transport President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Texas governor John Connally from a breakfast and speech at the Hotel Texas ballroom through the streets of Fort Worth to Carswell Air Force Base, where they boarded their short flight to Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, sold for $318,000.
- A Classic 1960 Continental Mark V limousine from President Kennedy’s DC motor pool, sold for $210,000.
- A pair of emblem-adorned rotary phones from the presidential suite at the Hotel Texas -- which Kennedy used to make his final call, sold for $31,200.
- A very rare set of eyeglasses from all three Kennedy brothers, sold for $42,000.
- Kennedy’s personally-owned and used monogrammed brass shaving set, sold for $27,600.
For a complete listing of auction results from Camelot: Fifty Years after Dallas, RR Auction’s JFK-themed auction, please go to the RR Auction website at www.rrauction.com.
