Michael Jackson eventually accepted he would never grow an Imperial

It’s been a mega month at the auction houses for pop-culture junkies. Hot on the heels of the US$66,000 sale of Michael Jackson’s iconic glitter glove, collectors were treated to another monumental event this past Tuesday when a fist-sized clump of Elvis Presley’s hair fetched US$15,000.

While there’s nothing wrong with sinking a small fortune into a battery-powered mitt illuminated by 50 tiny lights embroidered into the fabric, one would assume that there has to be more satisfying pursuits to shell out for. If you’re looking for something completely outlandish to do with your colossal fortune why not ride around in a rocket ship while performing wimpy poetry about water conservation like Cirque du Soleil founder (and faux astronaut) Guy Laliberté? That seems like a far better bang for your buck than draining your bank account on something that comes with a letter of authenticity from some simpleton claiming to be Frank Sinatra’s fifth cousin.

Granted, everyone is entitled to a hobby, but collecting things like mustard-stained napkins that the King of Rock ’n’ Roll once used to wipe cheeseburger fixings from his face definitely lands on the more frivolous—not to mention bizarre—side of things.

Who knows where the desire to accumulate this type of stuff comes from? One day you’re content to watch Justin and Rihanna’s not-so-secret love affair unfold on TMZ, and the next you’re ponying up thousands of dollars on eBay to get your hands on the couple’s condom wrappers, on account of the fact you’re a pop-culture aficionado. Right.

Acquiring possessions and even, uh, DNA from celebrities may be a perfectly acceptable pastime by our society’s warped standards, but the whole thing reeks of dysfunction. You start dropping coin on some A-lister’s gnarly old toothbrush and before long you’re hiring an undercover detective to track down their Hollywood dentist and then, well, we don’t need John Hinckley Jr. to tell us what happens next.

It’s truly baffling that celebrity status can turn toenail clippings strewn across the bathroom floor into a “collector’s piece” worthy of inciting a bidding war at Bonhams and Goodman. If anyone else tried to hawk something as disgusting from a simple commoner, they’d trigger mass gagging, but mention Elvis Presley’s name and overzealous Graceland fanatics gleefully whip out their “Love Me Tender” embossed cheque books.

Go ahead and fantasize about owning a trinket from the upper echelons of pop culture, but before you go trolling through the auction-house catalogues (assuming you have an extra quarter-million lying around), consider how strange it actually is to covet an item that belonged to someone you’ve likely never met. They have a word for it: stalking.

True, the world is ablaze with pointless activities to devote one’s time and energy to, so why shouldn’t collecting overpriced relics from superstars’ estates be just as acceptable as yodelling or, say, turning broken PCs into miniature greenhouses? Well, for one, performing vocal gymnastics in a pair of lederhosen or transplanting bonsai into your broken monitor doesn’t fuel the unhealthy obsession our culture has with people who grace the silver screen or sell millions of records. Let’s face it, there are women out there with a better grasp of Jennifer Aniston’s Pilates schedule than of their own monthly cycles, and it’s revelations such as these that should ring the alarm. We’re no longer mildly fascinated with pop culture—we’ve gone Courtney Love bonkers and are flying high in crazyland.

Some might argue that buying MJ’s legendary hand lamp holds just as much merit as investing in a highbrow Jackson Pollock painting, and it very well may, but the deciding factor is the buyer’s motivation. While you can be sure that collectors of Pollock’s work undoubtedly enjoy the bragging rights that come along with the ownership of such prestigious art, it’s pretty unlikely that any of them had harvesting DNA in mind when they made their purchase—something you wouldn’t put past a Jackson fanatic.