... `` As far as we know , she was n't anyone famous , '' Rebecca Weiss , a Swann Galleries employee , told me on the day after the auction . `` There 's no particular significance to her name . '' Then why would someone pay more than $ 4,000 for the photo ? Weiss told me that the identities of the buyers and sellers at Swann auctions are kept confidential , so she could not disclose who had consigned the photo for sale , or who had purchased it . But she said there is a pretty safe rule of thumb about the sale of autographs of renowned men and women : `` What people are buying is the mystique . They are taking home the autograph knowing that this person once actually touched this item , this person once actually left this imprint , this signature . '' She clearly knows what she is talking about ; just this weekend , it was announced that another auctioneer had sold what is purported to be perhaps the last autograph Kennedy ever signed : a copy of the Dallas Morning News that he reportedly signed for a woman
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- At an auction at a gallery in New York recently , a piece of artwork sold for a higher price than had been anticipated by the auctioneers : $ 4,080 . It was n't a very big piece of art -- just 8-by-10 inches . Technically , it was n't even art . It was a glossy black-and-white photograph . It had a slight imperfection : there were staple holes in the upper left-hand corner . Someone had written all over the front of the photograph . The person who had scrawled on it was , in fact , the subject of the photograph . He had written : `` To Patricia Keating , with very best wishes , John Kennedy '' That is what made the photo so valuable to someone : Kennedy had held it in his hands , had run his pen over it . The owners of Swann Galleries , where the signed photo was auctioned , believe that Kennedy had autographed the picture in 1956 , when he was a United States senator . The picture itself was n't worth much ; but his signature , personalized to Patricia Keating .