Boots, Berlin Wall and beans: Buy a piece of Reagan

From cowboy boots to a chunk of the Berlin Wall and a jar of jelly beans: an auction of Ronald Reagan memorabilia offers a tantalising glimpse into the private world of a US conservative icon.

Hundreds of items from the 40th President’s White House residence and the Bel Air home he shared with wife Nancy until his death in 2004 go on sale in New York next week and are expected to fetch $2 million.

From upholstered furnishings to mementoes of his Hollywood career and a monogrammed dinner service, the more than 700 lots include gifts from notables such as Frank Sinatra and Margaret Thatcher. Interest in the sale is likely to be high just six weeks before Americans go to the polls to elect either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican rival Donald Trump in a deeply divisive race that has left many Republicans more nostalgic than ever for the late President. Critics today may root much of today’s income inequality in Reaganomics, but for many on the right it was an era when American power seemed unchallenged, before the uncertainties of the post 9/11 era and the 2008 recession. The collection goes on display at Christie’s showroom in New York on Saturday. An online auction begins Monday, followed by a live auction Wednesday and Thursday.

Gemma Sudlow, head of private and iconic collections at the auction house in New York, said the collection was a biography of sorts of Reagan and his wife, who died earlier this year at 94. “It was an incredibly warm home,” Sudlow told AFP.

“One really got the sense that it was filled with furniture that they had had for almost their entire married life. There was a modesty to it, there was a simple elegance to it.”

A marine chronometer, from Frank Sinatra and his wife, is engraved with “Good Morning Mr President” and dedicated “Love Francis and Barbara.”

It is expected to fetch $5,000-10,000 on the auction block.

Fans of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister, may want to bid for “his ‘n’ her” silver beakers.