New York, Nov. 15 : A government auction of items seized from Ponzi king Bernard Madoff has raised almost a million dollars, an amount that would be used to help the victims of his billion-dollar wall-street swindle.

Madoff’s Mets baseball jacket and his wife Ruth''s Victorian diamond earrings fetched over 20 times their estimated value at the auction in Manhattan.

Even though the raised amount is twice as much as the auctioneers hoped, it is a mere fraction of estimated 21 billion dollars he stole.

Currently, he is serving a 150-year sentence for his multi-billion dollar fraud.

Jewellery dealers, souvenir hunters, collectors and the curious swooped on the Manhattan ballroom where the auction took place on Saturday, eager to snap up a piece of history.

However, Madoff''s "prisoner" model Rolex watch, which was expected to fetch nearly 90,000 dollars, only went for 65,000 dollars.

While the less glitzy Swatch watches - seven in all - expected to go for just 100 dollars- went for 850 dollars instead.

The total number of items sold were 200, which included furs, fishing tackle, dog bowls, vases and Hermes handbags.

The sale brought in 942,650 dollars - nearly twice the 500,000 dollars initial estimate.

The items were just some of the possessions he collected during his career as one of America''s biggest fraudsters of all time. (ANI)