When we heard that 2,000 items from the Neverland Ranch were going up for auction in April, we immediately wondered what kind of strange stuff would land in the catalog. Michael II’s blanket? Macaulay Culkin’s innocence? A ferris wheel? The exclusive peek that Chris Campion offers up in the Guardian is less salacious than we’d hoped, but it is funny in that it’s a mix of the totally boring with just a hint of the grotesque. According to him, “This new auction seems to mark Jackson’s severance from Neverland, his Xanadu and a symbol of his success as well as his largesse.” Huh. That’s not exactly the take we had.
Find a short “up for auction” list we compiled from Campion’s article after the jump (the Guardian also has a nice slideshow here), and let us know in the comments if there’s anything you’d actually pay for.
1. A royal cape inscribed inside with a message from his children
2. A portrait of Jackson as a young man in Elizabethan dress
3. Bronze statues of frolicking cherubs
4. Replica marble busts of Roman emperors
5. A large statue of Prometheus
6. Child-size diesel-powered race cars
7. A Pope-mobile-style electric buggy fitted with tinted windows and stereo system
8. Another buggy with MJ’s face painted on the hood
9. Vintage video game machines
10. Jackson’s collection of 18th- and 19th-century art
11. Books about Disney, the Three Stooges, Peter Pan and Alfred Hitchcock
12. A collection of black history books, including the autobiography of Malcolm X
13. A selection of his stage costumes, dating back from the days of the Jackson 5 through to the present