Article: Can't buy what really mattered

While we sure can measure the auction activity in dollars, it is a little more complex trying to figure why otherwise rational human beings would spend hundreds of thousands at Sotheby's this week simply to get a chair Jack Kennedy once sat in or a cigar humidor he touched 33 years ago. The bidding looks to be an effort to buy back an American past locked in the thick fog of nostalgia.

And a lot of people are wondering why the Kennedy family -- Jackie's kids actually -- put a warehouse of memorabilia on the market. Estate taxes? Walking-around money? Who knows?

Maybe a better question is what would prompt a person to shell out five figures for a high chair or six for a simple mahogany table? ...

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