A mirror that Michael Jackson looked into as he dressed in his final months and onto which he scribbled a message to himself sold for $18,750 at auction in Beverly Hills this weekend.
Julien's Auctions sold 524 items that furnished the 100 North Carolwood mansion in Los Angeles' Holmby Hills neighborhood, significant because it was where Jackson and his three children lived in the months before his death. Jackson did not own the furnishings.
Some items brought higher prices because of their infamy in crime scene photos shown in this year's trial of Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, but others were valuable because Jackson and his family left their mark on them.
A chalkboard may have cost a few hundred dollars, but it sold for $5,000 because of what his children wrote on it. The note, handwritten on the black board attached to a 26-inch-tall ceramic rooster, reads "love Daddy/ I (heart) Daddy/ Smile it's for free."
It sat in the kitchen where Jackson would eat lunch each day with Prince, Paris and Blanket Jackson. It was not known which child wrote the chalk note, but Julien's Executive Director Martin Nolan said his research suggested it was from Paris, who was 11 when her father died.
The mirror with a message is on a Victorian-revival-style armoire from Jackson's master bedroom, presumably where Jackson looked each day as he dressed. He used a wax pencil to remind himself: "Train, perfection March April Full out May."
The note is significant, considering that Jackson was battling the calendar as he prepared for his "This Is It" concerts set to premiere in London in July 2009.
Dr. Murray's defense lawyers argued during the trial that the intense pressure on Jackson to rehearse for the 50 shows put him in a desperate fight for sleep, which led to Murray administering the surgical anesthetic propofol nearly every night in the last two months of his life.
Murray was sentenced last month to four years in the Los Angeles County jail for involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's June 25, 2009 death.
Other items were macabre, not inspirational.
A small table that sat next to the bed where Jackson spent his last living hours in a desperate search for sleep sold for $5,000. The "French occasional table" was listed for between $300 and $500. It was a centerpiece of several key crime scene photos at Murray's trial, because several bottles of sedatives were found on it.
The oriental rug on which paramedics tried to revive Jackson sold for $15,360, although the auction catalog placed its value at between $400 and $600. It, also, is prominent on photos shown at the trial.
Julien's backed away from selling the bed in which Jackson received the fatal dose of the propofol after a personal request from his mother, Katherine Jackson, Nolan said.
The auction house's re-creation of the bedroom where Jackson died -- euphemistically called "the medicine room" by the company -- features a bed-sized memorial covered with love notes from Jackson fans instead of the death bed.
The most expensive items sold were a $35,200 watercolor painting of floral still life by Maurice Utrillo and a $46,875 oil painting of fishing village by Adelsteen Normann.
Jackson's relationship with Julien's turned sour in the last months of his life when he filed a lawsuit to stop the sale of furnishings from his Neverland ranch.
The singer sued the auction company, claiming he did not authorize the sale of items that were removed from Neverland after he sold the ranch. The suit was settled in April 2009 when Julien's canceled the auction and later returned the items to Jackson.
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