I totally want that “Moonwalker Robot Head.” That would be tight.
Michael Jackson is (unwillingly) having an auction of more than 2,000 items from his Neverland Ranch. Poor, little “Howard Hughes-esque” pop star. Not the orange, bedazzled glove! Anything but that!
Organizers say this is “not a fire sale,” although some items are not as pricey as one would expect. The Guardian went into some detail on the sale, the folks throwing it and the wares available.
Details after the jump.
This new auction seems to mark Jackson’s severance from Neverland, his Xanadu and a symbol of his success as well as his largesse. The ranch opened as a private amusement park in 1988, with its own zoo and Ferris wheel, roller coaster and bumper cars. It was named after Peter Pan’s fantasy island where children never grow up, and for years children would arrive by the busload, invited to play freely in its grounds. But following the 2005 child molestation trial – which saw Jackson acquitted of all charges – the singer never returned to the 2,800-acre property in the Santa Ynez Valley, 130 miles west of Los Angeles. There were stories of him pitching up in Dubai, Dublin and Las Vegas before he started renting a seven-bedroom mansion in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, earlier this year. The 50-year-old star was said to be defaulting on payments on vast loans, and while he is thought to retain an interest in Neverland through his involvement with a private investment company, Colony Capital, he has said that the police investigation of the premises “violated” it in his eyes.
Before it was recently renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch, and at Jackson’s request, Darren Julien and his team were brought in to scrutinise the ranch. What they found inside was the most astonishing collection of objects these experienced auctioneers said they had ever seen in a celebrity home. “It seemed as if everything he owned was made of bronze and marble and gold,” says Michael Doyle, who catalogued the sale items, as well as determining their value.
Jackson surrounded himself with regal finery. There were suits of armour, display cases of custom-made crowns and an ornately carved throne with red velvet upholstering in his bedroom. “King Michael” even had a royal cape, a Father’s Day present inscribed inside with a message from his children “Princess Paris” and “Prince Michael”. In the lobby of the house was a commissioned portrait of Jackson as a young man in Elizabethan dress, holding a crown on a velvet pillow. Julien and his team spent almost two months at Neverland last summer, meticulously cataloguing 2,000 items, which will be sorted into 1,500 lots. Cranes and forklifts were brought in to dismantle the fairground rides and move the ornate bronze sculptures scattered across 38 acres of the estate.
(Source: UK Guardian)
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