Onassis' Closet Clearing

For some down-sizing means throwing away the old, keeping the useful and storing mementos. Family heirlooms, generally tend to fall into the ‘storing pile’. But, what do you do, if the storing pile needs a vault and is worth around $13 million? Sometimes E-bay just isn’t the solution. For Athina Onassis, daughter of Christina Onassis and granddaughter of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, her clearout called for an auction at Christie’s International in London, not that she needed the money. With a fortune estimated to stand around the $2 billion, the heiress reportedly decided to sell the jewels as ‘they don’t fit with her modern lifestyle’ and not because she need gas money.

The star of the auction was a Harry Winston diamond necklace featuring 38 carat, pear-shaped, D color stone. It sold for a whopping $7.1 million, around $2.5 million more than its estimate.

The necklace was just part of a collection of more than that went under the hammer in the UK capital. A diamond ring with a pear-shaped stone weighing 14.79 carats doubled its low estimate selling for around $2.2 million, but there were also some slightly less blinging items on the block. For $3,000 you could have picked up a bangle made of elephant hair etched with the initials of Christina Onassis and her husband.