What price a child's love for a parent? Contrary to what countless Hallmark cards and sentimental movies have claimed over the years, such an emotion is, in fact, quantifiable. Well, it is if you're one of Michael Jackson's children – and that price turns out to be an impressively bargain basement $400-600 (£257-385).
That is the estimated price for a blackboard that hung in the home in which the singer died and, on the blackboard, scrawled in childish handwriting, is the message: "I [heart] daddy, Smile it's for free, love, Paris." Paris is Jackson's second child and only daughter who was 11 when her father died in 2009.
A candle on which his son Prince carved his name is priced at $100-200 in the everything-including-a-kitchen-sink amount of stuff in Saturday's auction of the contents of the last of Jackson's residences, a mansion at 100 North Carolwood Drive in Los Angeles. Smiles are the only thing chez Jackson to have escaped monetisation.
Last month, a gambling website paid $11,000 for a clump of Jackson's hair found in hotel shower drain which makes the note from his daughter seem even more of a steal.
"[The candle and blackboard] are sweet but they don't have intrinsic value. Yet I'm sure Michael's fans will be interested," said Martin Nolan, the executive director of Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, which is handling this sale.
Jackson's famously devoted fans have already expressed a lot of interest in everything about the auction, having stopped by on Friday night to set up a somewhat incongruous Christmas tree amid the rococo furniture and doodles from Jackson's children, reflecting Jackson's love of the holiday.
"In Neverland, every day was Christmas – there was even a room that was permanently full of Christmas presents, so the fans wanted to bring some of that to this auction," said Nolan, who also handled the auction of Neverland in 2009.
For this auction, Julien's Auctions recreated Jackson's home in its main office so "as to capture the experience of the house, and so that fans can see that Michael lived and passed on in a beautiful home and be happy about that," said Nolan.
At times, this experience is captured a little too sharply, such as when one finds oneself standing in a recreation of the room in which Jackson died. Just in case laying out the furniture upon which Jackson looked as he died from respiratory arrest – caused by his personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, who last month was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter – doesn't quite recreate the experience enough, the auction house includes giant photos of the actual room on its walls.
Yet among the gold parrot lamps, the frankly disturbing painting of kittens playing with an inkwell and rococo furniture that filled this room, one piece is notably missing: the bed in which Jackson died.
"Michael's family asked us not to sell that and we have respected their wishes," said Nolan. So to fill the space where the bed should have been, fans have left dozens and dozens of cards expressing their love for the singer.
Yet while the family may have had their qualms about flogging the deathbed itself, they are apparently perfectly comfortable with selling items personally inscribed not just by Jackson's children but Jackson himself.
There is shower bench on which Jackson drew a series of stick figures, apparently mapping out a dance routine. Then there is the note Jackson made to himself on the mirror of an armoire. With a black marker pen, he scrawled: "Train, perfection, March, April, Full Out, MAY," providing a painful glimpse into the pressure felt to prepare for his upcoming concerts in London that summer.
He died before any of those concerts took place and some have suggested that the strain of preparation may have contributed to his demise. Beneath the message is a drawing of a hunched stick figure, which looks like Jackson dancing but also like Jackson dying, evoking the frail and freighted-down figure he became in his later years. The armoire is slated to sell for $6,000-8,000, "because it is a beautiful piece but it also has that connection to Jackson," said Nolan.
This auction will not, in fact, benefit Jackson's family as the Carolwood house was rented and the furniture and house itself are being sold by the original owners.
"Jackson's family had nine months to decide what they wanted to keep for themselves and I guess they were happy for [the blackboard and armoire] to be sold," said Nolan. "We're expecting the auction to be exceptionally popular. It's Michael Jackson so everyone is interested in the pieces."