Some investments by Bernard Madoff unexpectedly paid off last weekend, when an auction of the swindler’s personal property sold for about $1 million ”“ twice what was expected.

A blue satin New York Mets baseball jacket with “MADOFF” stitched across the back fetched a bid of $14,500, and a New Jersey man bought a monogrammed set of golf clubs for $3,600. Two pairs of his wife’s diamond earrings sold for $70,000 each.

The goods were seized from Madoff’s Manhattan penthouse after he was sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding investors of nearly $65 billion. The proceeds of the auction will be divided among his victims.

The penthouse itself has reportedly attracted little interest at a price of $9.9 million. And although his Long Island beach house sold quickly for nearly $9 million, the price of his Palm Beach, Fla., house was reduced 7 percent to $7.9 million.

But bidding for Madoff memorabilia went through the roof at Saturday’s auction as jewelry, fishing gear, furniture and embossed notecards went under the gavel. Nobody was very impressed by the financier’s taste in accessories, but bidders competed to buy them. One tabloid headline exclaimed: “Gawkers flock to buy Wall St. crook’s trinkets.”

Buyers of the memorabilia clearly believe that Madoff will be remembered long after other Wall Street schemers are forgotten. The scale of his fraud was indeed brazen, but other financial manipulators are also responsible for billion-dollar losses.

The misjudgments that led to the collapse of the credit markets last year apparently weren’t criminal. But in the aftermath of the financial debacle that nearly wrecked the U.S. economy, it’s too bad that the only financial villain reaping public scorn is Bernard Madoff.

— Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Nick Cowenhoven at nickc@journaltribune.com or City Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski at kristenm@journaltribune.com.