GUEST: I brought you a couple sketches from Michael Jackson. I had the opportunity of being in school with him in tenth grade, and that was a school in Encino where there's about 90 students, so I had an art class with him. And I would watch him draw these drawings, and then he'd ball it up and throw it away. I asked him one day, "I love that Charlie Chaplin drawing-- can I have that?" And he said, "Sure, go ahead and take it home and enjoy it." But he didn't sign it, and so I got home and my dad said, "That should probably be signed," and he sent me back to school and I had him sign it and he just picked up a crayon and signed "Michael Jackson."
APPRAISER: What year was that in?
GUEST: It was the 1972-1973 school year.
APPRAISER: Now, did you listen to the Jackson 5 at all at this point in your life, or...?
GUEST: Absolutely, I was 14 and at eight years old, Michael Jackson was already famous.
APPRAISER: Well, one of the great things about it is, I mean, the Michael Jackson signatures on both of them are very, very nice, look absolutely correct, but it's the Chaplin art that really screams out to me because throughout a lot of his life, he really tried to compare himself with Chaplin. In 1995, he recorded a Chaplin song called "Smile" for his HIStory album and was trying to do a video where he played Charlie Chaplin. That didn't quite work out very well for licensing reasons. Now, that one's pretty obvious-- it says "Chaplin." Now, what can you tell me about the one closer to you?
GUEST: This one, I really enjoy the picture of this woman, and I asked him who it was and I couldn't remember who it was, and I had an opportunity to present these pictures to Jermaine Jackson, and he told me that this looked like one of the tutors that they would go around on tour with. Because they weren't in school, they would have a tutor, and that looked like her.
APPRAISER: A couple years back, there was a painting by Michael Jackson he did at the age of nine of Charlie Chaplin, and that did all right, but these are larger, they're very clear, the signature on both of them is very nice. I spoke with a couple of my colleagues. It's tough-- there aren't a lot of comparables out there-- but we feel that these would perform very strongly at auction and would give an estimate of between $8,000 and $10,000 each.
GUEST: Oh, that's great, that's awesome. Thank you.
