Michael Jackson spent his final days in a beautifully appointed private home that was not his own. But the fact that they were his final days now potentially can turn into a financial bonanza for the house's actual owners, who are selling off over 600 items the late singer and his children used and lived with while he rehearsed for his comeback "This Is It" tour in 2009.
The auction will be conducted by Julien's Auctions on Dec. 17; a free exhibit of items from the 100 North Carolwood Drive house will be open as of Dec. 12. As auctioneers Darren Julien and Martin Nolan told TODAY's Ann Curry, they will re-create rooms from the house and place the items up for bid, so that visitors and bidders can get a sense of what it was like to live amongst the furniture and personal items up for grabs -- many of which were marked or written on by Jackson and his children.
"There's still a demand for his items," said Nolan. "Everywhere around the world people desperately want something, they're very nostalgic, they want a memory. Michael is gone and they want to cling on to something tangible."
One item is an armoire mirror that Jackson wrote a message to himself on: "Train perfection March April May. Full out." As Julien noted, the piece itself (just the mirror visited the TODAY studios) would go for $6,000-$8,000 "but because it was associated with Michael Jackson we anticipate that it will sell for much more."
Other items being shown in the TODAY studio included chairs from "the medication room" in the house and a rooster butler holding up fruit and displaying a chalkboard, on which a child had scribbled: "Love daddy, I heart daddy, smile it's for free." In another instance, a fat yellow candle with engravings by Prince is also up for auction.
"This is stuff that was in a typical family home, and that's what we're trying to show people," said Nolan. "Michael in a beautiful home with his children, normal kids growing up, and this is a part of the memory of that."
A recent Michael Jackson auction didn't go so well; unseen footage from the singer's 1993 "Dangerous" tour failed to sell in London, but tangible items that fans can put their hands on and even perhaps use -- which Michael Jackson also used and put his hands on -- are likely to command a much higher value. And the headboard from the bed in which Jackson actually died has since been removed from the auction. Still, the notion that anything was "typical" in the Jackson household ... that might be something of a harder sell, for any auction house.
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