MER
June 1996
What Thirty Years Bought
Closed mid-May 1996 · On stands late May 1996
The Front
Index of the Auction
Lots sold, the record price, the estimate it beat and by how much, the going rate for a strand of cultured pearls with a name attached
The Essay
The Provenance Economy
What buyers are really bidding on when a name attaches to an object
The Foreign File
Hong Kong's Countdown
A dispatch on the territory's business class hedging bets ahead of the 1997 handover to Beijing
Bonn's Waiting Room
A stringer's dispatch on Chancellor Kohl's coalition and the long argument over when — and whether — the government finally moves to Berlin
The City
Subject: Sotheby's and the record-setting weeks of spring
The Back
Between Hard Covers
Sex and the City collected as a book — a Back-section review
The Estate Sale of the Season
The estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sells at Sotheby's for $34.5 million against a $4.6 million estimate