Diana's diamonds and space pioneer up for e-auction

By CHARLES ARTHUR

LONDON - One of the most remarkable online auctions began yesterday of an eclectic collection of popular culture, from Princess Diana to dinosaur bones to a boy band, many with multi-million dollar prices.

Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network and the online retailer Amazon were offering the diamond necklace the princess wore at her last formal public appearance in spring 1997, a few months before her death in a car crash.

She attended a performance of Swan Lake wearing a necklace laden with five pearls and 11 diamonds, which has an estimated price between $7m and $10m.

But that was dwarfedby the Vostok 3KA-2, a Soviet spacecraft expected to sell for up to $15m. It was launched in March 1961, crewed by a mannequin and a dog, the final test, 20 days before the first human space mission, by Russia's Yuri Gagarin.

"It can be seen as the most significant space vehicle ever offered for sale," gushed the site. Rich would-be amateur astronauts should note that no guarantees were offered about its airworthiness.

The dinosaur skeleton, expected to sell for up to $3m, has the first jaw found in such a fossil. Even among dinosaur fans, who buy and sell at top prices, the 50 per cent complete skeleton marked a notable find.

Other items included a letter from Clear Annie Cameron, one of the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic, who mailed a letter from the ship two days before it sank. The letter, expected to fetch up to $300,000, is among just five believed to have survived.

Although Amazon's site crashed on Thursday for 15 minutes with an "internal glitch" for the second time in a week, the company was optimistic that it would be able to push through the sales.

But prominently not featured in the auction was Kevin Mitnick, the infamous hacker. Amazon and three other major auction and retailing sites were approached to auction his prison ID card, which he had to use for four years while on remand after arrest in 1995 on hacking charges.

Amazon said putting the card up for sale "didn't promote the image" the company wanted. Mitnick was released in January after a five-year prison term for stealing software and altering computer information of such victims as Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems, and the University of Southern California, costing them millions.

He became an icon to some hackers after leading the FBI on a three-year manhunt that ended when investigators traced his electronic footprints to an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yesterday Mitnick said e-Bay told his father selling identification cards was illegal due to the risk of fraudulent use. "The chance that someone would try to take this ID and impersonate me and try to break into a federal prison to be a prisoner is ludicrous," he said.

Mitnick would not have been able to watch the sale if his card had been accepted. Under the strictly-enforced rules of his parole, Mitnick – once described as "the most dangerous computer hacker in the US" – is forbidden from contact with computers.

His ID card is being offered on start-up auction site DutchBid.com.