Victims, voyeurs and bargain hunters descended on the Sheraton Hotel in New York yesterday to snap up household items that were once owned by Bernard Madoff, the convicted fraudster.

The auction, in aid of his victims, was planned to last all day. Strong bidding broke out for Madoff’s collection of watches, including a rare “prisoner” Rolex, modelled on those made for allied airmen imprisoned in Germany during the second world war. Attendees, though, were generally underwhelmed by the haul. As well as watches and expensive jewellery, the 200-item auction included a half-used sticky pad, golf shoes and a wetsuit.

Dave Goodboy, who works for a New York hedge fund, said he was attending the auction out of “morbid curiosity”. “I’m looking for nick-nacks, something to tell a story, something for my wall,” he said, adding he had been surprised by the lacklustre nature of many of the goods. “It doesn’t really look like a billionaire’s stuff. It’s the sort of stuff that you’d find at a Hamptons garage sale,” he said.

Another bidder said some of his friends had lost money in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: “I just hope that this sale can go someway to helping those people. Madoff was a very bad man.”

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