Legal ivory auction breaks French price records

A French auction of legal ivory broke records on Saturday, with prices reaching up to 1,000 euros a kilogramme ($630 a pound), according to Alexander Debussy, associate director of auction house Cannes Encheres.

All of the lots were acquired before 1976 -- the only type of ivory that can be legally sold since a global ban on the trade in 1989.

The top lot -- two tusks weighing 120 kilogrammes (265 pounds) from an elephant that was "shot in 1966 by an Italian fighter in Kenya" -- went to a wealthy Qatari for 125,000 euros, the auction house said.

An Armenian collector paid almost 69,000 euros for another lot, which included two tusks around 230 centimetres (90 inches) long from an elephant killed in the Central African Republic in the 1960s.

All in all, 600 kilogrammes of ivory, made up of 47 tusks separated into 27 lots, went under the hammer for a total of 520,000 euros.

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