A Michael Jackson MTV award fetched US$16,000 Wednesday at a huge auction of goods belonging to the "King of Pop" and his famous family, but it was less than a thrilling start to the sale.
Ruby Pitman, 8, of California takes a photograph of Jackson family items, including Michael Jackson's mid-80s era, black-crested custom jacket (upper left) on display during a preview for an auction at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, on Wednesday, May 30, 2007.
In addition to 16,000 dollars for his MTV award for We Are the World, gold disc awards for his album Off the Wall and the Jackson 5 single I Want You Back raked in US$11,000 each, according to figures available on the Internet.
But many of the items sold at a Las Vegas hotel-casino by Guernsey's Auction House -- which has billed the two-day event as the biggest-ever sale of Jackson family memorabilia -- went under the hammer for just a few hundred dollars.
A platinum record for the massively successful song Billie Jean was sold for just 100 dollars, while a picture signed by the pop legend was bought for US$750.
One of the most notable items, a copy of the contract for Jackson's purchase in 1987 of the California ranch that he nicknamed "Neverland," sold for just US$100 at the auction held at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Jackson started out in the 1960s with four of his older brothers in the Jackson 5 pop group, which produced a series of platinum records for Motown, selling millions.
Some of the items in Wednesday and Thursday's sale date back to this period, while others are from his hugely successful solo years in the 1980s, when he recorded albums such as Thriller and Bad.
Jackson himself initially opposed the auction before the matter was resolved amicably. The goods belonged to one of the singer's associates but were seized by creditors when the person went bankrupt.
The 48-year-old singer quit Neverland and spent most of the past two years in the Gulf state of Bahrain after a California court acquitted him in 2005 of child molestation charges. He has recently moved to Las Vegas.
(Agencies via CRI.cn May 31, 2007)
