Sotheby’s ‘Gold Fur’ Boring Monkey NFT Auction Will Test Art World Demand Again

A select batch of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club-centric Ethereum NFTs will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on June 18, providing a blank test for the staying power of Ape-themed assets in the art community.

Many of the collectibles include an NFT profile photo (PFP) of the Bored Ape Yacht Club decked out in a leather work vest and “sushi chef headband.” known as Monkey #8552One of the main selling points of NFTs, aside from Ape’s solid gold fur, of course, is their previous owners, who are now bankrupt.

The NFT, once an asset held by Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a cryptocurrency hedge fund that collapsed amid widespread market turmoil in 2022, is accompanied by other digital art pieces. This includes two gold NFTs from Yuga’s Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection and a depiction of a dog from Yuga’s Bored Ape Kennel Club line.

NFTs from profile photo collections typically contain a variety of random characteristics. Aside from the provenance of your collectibles, this can also have a huge impact on the value of your NFT.

For example, the cheapest ape sold on the secondary market would currently cost around $48,000. NFT price floor. However, only 46 of the 10,000 apes were minted for their gold fur, with the last selling for $933,000, or 247 ETH, in March.

On-chain sales tracked on NFT marketplaces open sea, 9 of the 12 highest selling Bored Apes included Apes with golden fur. And that trait has served Sotheby’s well before. In 2021, arthouses hit record numbers. Sold for $3.4 million This is a boring monkey featuring golden fur.

Citing the year Yuga Labs launched its Bored Ape line, Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFTs Michael Bouhanna described Bored Ape as a “2021 relic” on Twitter (aka X).

Meanwhile, an NFT researcher who posts on Twitter under the name Punk9059 highlighted This is the price 3AC initially paid for the asset. According to an account that collected Ape and Kennel Club NFTs in July 2021, 3AC hit 106 ETH, worth about $401,000 at current prices.

Mutant Apes, a spin-off collection released in August 2021,“It changes late” A token granted to existing holders of the Bored Ape collection. Bored Ape holders had to “transform” an existing Ape or purchase one of the 10,000 additional Mutant Apes that Yuga had released for public sale.

The very rare Bored Apes can still fetch a high price, but prices for the more common ones have dropped dramatically since Apes. highest lowest price By April 2022, it had reached nearly $430,000. Last year, due to the rise of Ethereum itself, this known price low fell from $84,250 (46 ETH) to $47,500 (12.6 ETH).

The aforementioned artwork owned by 3AC, which was sold by the liquidator to cover outstanding debts, has previously attracted a lot of attention at Sotheby’s. A year ago, Ringers #879, a piece of generative art known as “The Goose”, drew the following picture: Sold for $6.2 millionIncluding auction house fees.

decryption We reached out to Bouhanna and other Sotheby’s representatives for more information about the planned Bored Ape auction, but did not immediately hear back.

Editor: Andrew Hayward