I just……….
Ebay is a great thing. And I understand that sometimes people sell things because they need money.
Some of the items don’t bother me at all; things associated with Professional Jeanette especially. There are things I’d like to buy or that I plan on bidding on.
But I have never, ever felt more protective of this person than I do right now.
Seeing her little cookbook, all full of clippings and tape and notes, out for the highest bidder, breaks my heart more than anything I’ve seen so far. The fact that she had nobody to give these things to except fan club presidents breaks my heart. Things like that should be handed down to someone who will treasure them, not sold for profit. The idea that people are swarming like hungry sharks for things like a canceled check that proves that she paid her effing water bill………what IS this??? How messed up is this? Treasuring the PERSON, not the stuff, is what makes this cool. I’m a collector too, guys, and Lord KNOWS if anyone gave me any of this stuff I would treasure it and take care of it, but I just find the auction format so, so, so distasteful for certain of these things. I find the “we don’t care where this goes or who buys it as long as we get paid” mentality cruel. That’s probably my horse background; I’m very anti-auction. In this case, it’s fine for so many things—I love Ebay—but this doesn’t feel right to me.
As a friend just pointed out in a text, it’s like she’s dying for the last time. Seeing a collection of her things like this makes her feel so alive for a moment, and then when you realize that it’s exclusively to make money, it feels like a violation. Speaking of violating her, $250.00 for her Social Security Card is 57 kinds of sick, weird, exploitative and upsetting. How weird and creepy do you feel right now, People of Ebay, that you have Jeanette’s SSN and banking information?
It’s one o’clock in the morning and I am just upset. I need to go to bed.
I knew this was coming, this “living estate” going to auction. I just didn’t expect to have such an emotional reaction to it.
You are loved, Jeanette.
The Case for Jeanette and Nelson 
I felt the exact same way when I first saw that check in the group. I was like “where did they get that, and why would they auction something like this off???” Yes, it doesn’t surprise me that this will go to the highest bidder, but some of these personal effects shouldn’t be just made public, cos first of all, a lot of it just feels wrong to be made public. Second of all, it just goes to show how people can just use anything that was previously owned by a celebrity to make money. It’s like those bits where you clip a famous person’s hair, or take a piece of gum that someone had used, and sell them on an auction, and, depending on the celeb, people will pay lots of money. Sometimes we forget what fan really means. It’s short for “fanatic”. And that’s what these people really are, both the people who are selling it (had it in the first place, imho), and the people who want to buy it.
And then there’s a part of me who wants “our” people to get it all, because I know it will be “safe” with us. And I’m not really judging the people who buy it. The situation just makes me really sad. Hell, I’m sad for Tessa, whose estate this is, and I don’t know her and I don’t like what she stands for and this STILL makes me sad for her, that this is happening theoretically to pay for her nursing care. It stinks all the way around. There are some of these items that I am VERY interested in buying. Others…like her SS card…no thanks. And I’d love to own that cookbook, but the fact of it being for sale like this I just find shattering.
Yeah…I was kind of speechless about it myself. One half of me is deeply saddened, the other half wishing “we” could have some sort of permanent exhibit/collection for stuff like this!
Yeah…I was sort of speechless about it myself. One half of me is deeply saddened, the other half wishes there was some sort of permanent exhibit/collection for stuff like this!
P.S.: Erm, this is “jazzvampire”, by the way! Apparently I still have an old account, abandoned years ago after I stopped blogging! 🙂
The necklace jeanette macdonald wore in 2 of her films iwould treasure all my life if i could buy it. the films were New Moon and Maytime jeanette wore the necklace while singing WANTING YOU IN NEW MOON and in some scenes in Maytime. i wonder where the necklace went?