Auction provides glimpse of Kennedys

''I came of age during the Kennedy administration, and my wife and I were big fans of the Kennedys," Carter said.

The bulk of the items in the auction, held at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, belonged to the late Robert White, a Kennedy admirer who became fascinated as a teenager with the then-senator. White, a cleaning-supplies salesman, began a correspondence with Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, and they became friends after the president's 1963 assassination.

''The two were kindred spirits in their devotion to the late president," said Guernsey's president Arlan Ettinger. ''It was said that Robert became the son that she never had."

When Lincoln died in 1995, she bequeathed a file cabinet full of presidential items to White, adding to his already substantial collection.

The few dozen bidders who showed up in person yesterday competed with telephone and Internet bidders.

The auction, which concludes tomorrow, includes a wide array of ephemera from restaurant bills to campaign posters and buttons to crayons used by a young Caroline Kennedy.

On a page of presidential doodles, the phrase ''Blockade Cuba!" is circled.

Among the lots is a ''hot line" telephone the president took with him when he traveled -- and which provided an automatic connection to the White House.

Some items went for as little as $120 yesterday, and a number of lots -- such as a 1950 Kiwanis Club certificate -- failed to sell.

''I'm just fascinated by the Kennedys," said Antonio Lopez, a hospital ward clerk from Brooklyn who paid $780 for a framed photograph of the former president speaking on the telephone, wearing glasses. And these prices are reasonable."