Michael Jackson Seeks His Lost Fortune
Michael Jackson has gone back to work. He is to appear onstage for 50 concerts, with almost a million tickets, which sold-out in just five hours.
But, as CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, even those ticket sales may not be enough to pull the troubled "King of Pop" back onto financial sound footing, so more drastic measures have been taken.
The big question: Does this middle-aged, surgically altered, scandal-scarred Jacko still have what it takes to thrill audiences over the course of such a demanding tour?
Not everyone's convinced.
"He looks like he can do the moonwalk once, and then lay down and stay in his oxygen tent for a while," pop music critic Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph told CBS News.
His promoter, however, doesn't sound worried. "We're not naive, we wouldn't have done this if we didn't think he could do it," says Randy Phillips.
Back when there was no question over his physical ability, Jackson was making multiple millions of dollars every year. But lavish tastes and high-profile lawsuits drained his fortune.
This tour, he hopes, will prop it back up.
"I'm not going to pretend it's not about money. Money is important," acknowledges Phillips.
In fact, it's so important right now that Jackson is auctioning off the entire contents of his Neverland Ranch.
Some of the items are on display already in County Kildare, Ireland, where the singer lived briefly in 2005.
"It took 10 semi-trailers to remove everything from the property," says auctioneer Darren Julien.
And he means everything -- right down to the trash cans.
But it's the musical memorabilia that collectors will want. Julien has valued a jacket from Jackson's "Dangerous" tour at between $4,000 and $6,000.
So maybe this will be the year Michael Jackson returns to the ranks of the rich -- as well as the famous.
