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John F. Kennedy Jr.’s Silver Teething Ring

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:600.00 - 800.00 USD
John F. Kennedy Jr.’s Silver Teething Ring

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Auction Date:2014 Sep 17 @ 11:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
The Kennedy family’s personally-owned blue plastic teething ring for John F. Kennedy, Jr., measuring 1.75? in diameter, featuring an attached sterling silver rattle handsomely engraved with the initials “J. F. K. Jr.” and details of his birth, including “Month: 11-25,” “Year: 1960,” “6 LBS. 8 OZ,” and an analog clock indicating the time of his birth as 12:22 AM. The ring exhibits some light bite marks and a few areas of the rattle are slightly tarnished. Includes a detailed letter of provenance on White House letterhead from Lillian Rogers Parks, who was a best selling author as well as housekeeper and seamstress at the White House for over 30 years, from President Hoover through President Eisenhower. In part: “The sterling silver teething ring is engraved J. F. K. Jr., November 25, 1960, 6 lbs. 3 oz., 12:22 A.M. It has a light blue plastic ring attached…Viola Wise, my close friend, used to baby sit ‘John John’ and feed him from time to time. At first he, like a lot of babies, was ‘ugly.’ She would hold him and say, ‘John John, you may be an ugly darlin baby but you are a millionaire and the President’s son too. It gave her joy to see the President lie on his back and hold ‘John John’ over his head and play with him. The President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave her this teething ring in the family quarters at the same time they gave her a pair of silk shorts also monogrammed J. F. K. Jr. This was in the summer of 1963…Viola worked at the White House from 1939–1981. She gave this teething ring to me as a present one Christmas. We were close friends…This teething ring was a personal possession of the President, First Lady and their son.” John F. Kennedy, Jr., was born just two weeks after Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election, and he became a national beloved child and the subject of some of the most iconic photos from the Kennedy era—notably, the image of him sitting under his father’s desk in the Oval Office, and the photograph of him saluting his father’s casket during the president’s funeral. This teething ring is a scarce artifact from John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s earliest years in the White House and representative of the nation’s perspective of the Kennedy family’s heir apparent as they watched him grow from a newborn baby to a young toddler. A Camelot relic of extreme interest to the advanced Kennedy collector.