Top item at fundraiser? $1 million for Jimmy Carter’s old art tools, print

The Carter Center had valued the set at $2,000.

In all, the auction at this year’s retreat in San Diego raised $2,541,585. Donors there later contributed another $272,900 to the center, according to spokesperson Barbara Ann Luttrell.

Retreat events have raised about $2 million a year in recent past years and $46 million cumulatively over more than three decades. The biggest winning bid at last year’s event was $225,000 for an oil painting of a bald eagle by the former president.

Carter created more than 100 oil paintings after leaving the White House and had a studio at his south Georgia home in Plains.

The annual fundraising retreat contributes just a small portion of the overall budget for the Carter Center, which Carter and his wife Rosalynn co-founded to improve health, support democracy and spread freedom around the world.

This year’s auction included campaign memorabilia, artwork, items signed by the Carters or other famous people, and gifts given post-White House to the former first couple.

A guitar autographed by Stevie Nicks went for $250,000. A photo signed by Rosalynn Carter got a winning bid of $100,000, while a package of Martin Luther King Jr. memorabilia that included a photo signed by the civil rights leaders sold for $210,000. A bundle of Carter’s agricultural hand tools, possibly purchased in the West Africa nation of Togo, brought in $101,000.

The Carters last attended the annual retreat in person in 2019. The former president, who is 99 years old, is mostly homebound these days in Plains, the rural Georgia town where he and Rosalynn grew up. He last appeared in public at Rosalynn’s funeral last November.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Georgia governor has been in hospice for 16 months. He’s approaching his 100th birthday this October and plans are in the works around Georgia to mark the day.