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The rhinestone-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson when he first performed his moonwalk sold at auction at the weekend for $350,000 (£212,000) — more than 10,000 times its original price.
Fans swarmed the Hard Rock Cafe in New York on Saturday for the chance to bid on 70 pieces of memorabilia once owned by the late King of Pop. Jackson wore the sparkling, white-leather left glove, which originally cost $30, when he performed Billie Jean at Motown’s 25th anniversary TV special in 1983. After the performance, the enigmatic singer gave the glove to Walter “Clyde” Orange of the Commodores.
Darren Julien, the chief executive of Julien’s Auctions, which ran the sale, called the modified golf glove “the holy grail of Michael Jackson”. The opening bid of $10,000 jumped immediately to $120,000 as a bidding war erupted, to gasps and cheers from the assembled fans. The hammer finally came down at $350,000 — meaning a final price of $420,000 with commissions; ten times the pre-sale estimate.
The winning bidder was Hoffman Ma, the deputy chief executive of the Ponte 16 casino resort in Macau, China. The five-star hotel — which is half-owned by the prominent gambling tycoon Stanley Ho’s Sociedade de Jogos de Macau — plans to open a gallery next year to display the glove and nine other Jackson memorabilia items acquired at the auction.
These included a pair of sequinencrusted socks, portraits of Charlie Chaplin drawn by Jackson as a child, and a shirt he wore in the Thriller video. The hotel plans to turn the gallery into a “gathering place in Asia” for Jackson fans.
Mr Ma, who travelled to New York for the sale, said that he had been prepared to pay more and thought he got a bargain. “It was a fairly good discount,” he said.
Jackson, who died on June 25, aged 50, dominated the sale, despite competition from stars ranging from Elvis Presley to Mariah Carey. “There were more than 68 artists and bands, from Bob Dylan to the Beatles, represented in this auction — but Michael Jackson was undoubtedly the star of the show,” said Martin Nolan, the executive director of Julien’s Auctions.
The fedora hat that Jackson wore for the moonwalk sold for $22,000 — also ten times its pre-sale estimate, while a black jacket from his 1989 Bad tour fetched $225,000; 20 times its estimate.
A signed We Are the World poster fetched $27,500, his handwritten lyrics to Beat It brought in $60,000 and his 1985 Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL sold for $104,500.
“That’s what death brings upon celebrity,” said Brendan Doyle, a student who attended the auction. “Jackson’s death was such a tragedy at such a young age that it pushed up prices.”
Jackson would have appreciated the interest, as something of a collector himself. In 1999, the superstar paid more than $1.5 million for the Gone With the Wind Best Picture Oscar statue at a Sotheby’s auction, one of the highest prices ever paid for memorabilia at auction.
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