RBG’s fashion collar highlights the charity auction

WASHINGTON – A gold court necklace made of glass beads that belonged to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being auctioned off to benefit charity, marking the first time any signature necklace has been put up for sale.

The piece is part of a collection of about 100 items that will be sold in an online auction starting Wednesday. It ends on September 16, just days before the two-year anniversary of the liberal icon’s death at 87.

In addition to the necklace, items up for auction include Ginsburg’s opera glasses, a wooden gavel and artwork hanging in her Washington apartment.

There are also ambiguities. “It’s hard not to mention the cake topper,” her son James said in an interview about the collection. “The delightful statue was commissioned by her friends and given to Justice on her birthday. She is dressed in Justice’s robes and stands with arms outstretched on the bow of a battleship nicknamed Justice, the Notorious RBG.” Ginsberg said it reminded him of a small scene from the movie “Titanic.”

The auction includes other Ginsburg fashion pieces: a white handbag, shawl, scarf and two fishnet lace gloves. After undergoing treatment for colon cancer in the late 1990s, she began wearing gloves. The Supreme Court’s first female justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, suggested shaking hands as a way to prevent disease, but Ginsburg continued to wear them because she liked the gloves.

But it was Ginsberg’s collar—which she wore on the bench as an accessory to her black dress—that was her most famous fashion item. She had dozens, her son and daughter-in-law said. The family donated a lot to the Smithsonian, including the sparkly black she wore to the bench when she protested the case. In the year Speaking at an event in 2020, Ginsburg, who became a pop culture icon in her later years, received collars “at least once a week” from fans around the world at the time.

The auction was originally planned to include two Ginsburg collars. Another piece of cloth was a gift from her scribes. Sewn into it is the family motto, “It’s not sacrifice, it’s family.” But the family said in a statement on Tuesday that they had decided to keep the collar and loan it permanently “to an appropriate institution where it can be seen by all”. The family did not provide further details.

The auction is the third this year owned by Justice, and her son said it will be the last. In April, about 150 items, including Ginsberg’s artwork displayed in her home and office, raised more than $800,000 for the Washington National Opera, one of the latter’s needs for justice.

Bonhams, which is conducting the latest auction, estimates that the current group of objects will sell for a total of less than $50,000. But in January, an online auction of her books at Bonhams brought in $2.3 million; That’s about 30 times the pre-sale estimate.

Bonhams said it expects the necklace to sell for $3,000 to $5,000. At a previous book auction, however, a 1957-58 copy of the Harvard Law Review with Ginsburg’s annotations sold for more than $100,000, beating Bonhams’ estimate of $2,500 to $3,500.

Proceeds from current sales will support the Ginsburg Honors Endowment, which benefits SOS Children’s Villages, which supports vulnerable children around the world. Ginsburg’s daughter-in-law, Patrice Michaels, is on the organization’s advisory board. Composer and singer Michaels said the gavel being auctioned is one Ginsberg gave her to use when she performed a composition she wrote about Ginsberg’s conflicts. There was also a gold rosary she had chosen from Ginsburg’s collection.

“I literally thought it was beautiful,” Michael said. “I was fascinated by his beauty and the feeling of being as beautiful as my father-in-law.