Friday 28 January 2011

Signed Michael Jackson cement slab up for auction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – For the Michael Jackson collector with superhuman strength: a 375-pound (170 kg) slab of concrete featuring the pop star's hand and foot impressions along with his signature will go on the block in Los Angeles next month, its auctioneer said.

The item is dubbed the "Broken Heart Stone," said auction house Nate D. Sanders, because a surface crack runs through a heart design within Jackson's left palm print.

The online auction, to be held at http://www.natedsanders.com, will end on February 15.

The slab dates from 1984 when Jackson made the impression for a Las Vegas Walk of Fame project that never materialized. It was discovered in the Riviera Hotel basement in 2006 and raffled-off to a guest, who in turn sold it for an undisclosed sum to its current owner in 2009.

Coincidentally the consignor, Andy Wilson of Santa Maria, Calif., was an acquaintance of Jackson's, and bought it with the star's blessing.

Sanders told Reuters on Wednesday that the slab could sell for more than $100,000. His firm last month auctioned off another unorthodox piece of memorabilia, selling the rotting coffin of suspected John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald for more than $87,000.