Top 10 Most Expensive Nfts Artworks Sales Ever
NFTs are a booming business and trading them can make you millions, if you choose the right ones. Some NFTs are going for jaw-dropping amounts and commanding almost unbelievable price tags.
The tail end of 2021 saw NFTs take the worlds of art gaming and entertainment by storm, they’re showing no signs of slowing down as 2022 rumbles on. Whether you think they’re a speculative fad or a great new opportunity for artists and entrepreneurs. NFTs continue to make the headlines especially when they sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a pop.
We are going to show you in this article all about the most expensive NFT sales we’ve seen so far. Get ready for your mind to be blown and your jaw to hit the floor.
But before we jump into that, to properly understand why NFTs have been melting faces in recent times. Let’s start with a brief analysis of what makes up an NFT is only constructive.
What are NFTs in simple terms?
An NFT is a type of cryptographic token that represents a unique asset, be it in the real world or digital format and it functions as verifiable proof of authenticity and ownership within a blockchain network.
Furthermore, NFTs are inherently non-interchangeable with one another. This allows for the introduction of non-fungibility and provable scarcity to digital and creative economies.
While there are many different types of NFTs and NFT token standards such as ERC 721 and ERC 1155. They all generally boast the following qualities namely: immutability, uniqueness, permanence, provable, scarcity, and intrinsic blockchain-backed value.
Now digital art has perhaps been the most salient use case for NFTs in recent times. This has been primarily fueled by the fact that some of the most expensive non-fungible tokens in existence are those possessing an artistic component. Just think about those mighty punks or apes for instance.
PAK’s ‘The Merge’ NFT
First up ‘the merge’, arguably the most expensive NFT sale to date.
‘The Merge’ was minted in early December 2021 on the Nifty gateway NFT marketplace and took place over a two-day sales event. Launched in early December 2021 by anonymous artist PAK. What makes this artwork particularly unique is that buyers didn’t purchase the actual Ethereum-based NFTs like you would at a Sotheby’s NFT auction for instance. Instead, they paid for mass tokens that would be combined to create dynamic distinctive NFT collectibles following the token sale, based on how many tokens were merged.
‘PAK’ was one of the early stars of the NFT space and is the first artist to earn more than one million dollars total from tokenized artwork. PAK has also continued to push the NFT ecosystem forward, organizing several culturally relevant events such as Sotheby’s first NFT auction, experimental drops, and a lot more.
The mysterious artist has now single-handedly yielded one of the largest NFT drops to date with Merge and Pack’s prominent profile and enigmatic format attracting many NFT collectors. More than 28,000 of them collectively spent over 91.8 million dollars during the two-day token sale.
In fact, according to stats from Nifty Gateway, a total of 266,444 mass tokens were purchased with the top wallet amassing 8,600 mass tokens. Existing pack NFT collectors gained early access to the sale and could purchase tokens for 299$ apiece, while the public sale started at 400$ per token and increased in 25 dollar increments every six hours with the last tokens selling for 575 dollars apiece.
Technically speaking ‘The Merge’ is the highest-grossing NFT project in nifty gateway’s history and it defined ‘The Merge’ as quote the largest ever sale by a living creature.
Now while this does indeed sound impressive, it isn’t correct for instance. British artist Damian Hurst who has since entered the NFT space himself held a 200 million dollar solo artwork auction in 2008. While American artist Jasper John’s flag reportedly sold for 110 million dollars in 2010.
Now in parallel with ‘The Merge’, Pak has released other collections including the likes of ‘X’, ‘The Fungible’, and ‘Lost Poets’.
Beeple’s “Everydays” NFT
While ‘The Merge’ primary sale almost hit a staggering 92 million dollars on the NFT front, Beeple’s 69.3 million sales in March of 2021 holds the title for a single piece of artwork. According to Christie the American digital artist Beeple should be considered as a quote of the top three most valuable living artists.
Unfortunately, many people might be inclined to debate this point, but Beeple has played a major role in the development of the NFT ecosystem as a whole. Especially as it pertains to raising awareness and growing the cultural appeal of NFTs.
Funnily enough, until October of 2020, the most Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple had ever sold a print for was 100$, but in early march of 2021, an NFT of his artwork went for a jaw-dropping 69 million dollars in a first of its kind auction held by renowned British auction house Christie’s.
That as they say escalated quickly, this record-breaking NFT sale came after months of progressively valuable auctions and an aggressive growth spurt and price discovery in the NFT market. for instance, in late October 2020, Winkelmann sold his first series of NFTs with a pair going for 66,666 dollars each. Then in December, he sold a series of works for 3.5 million total and in February of 2021, one of his NFTs that originally went for 66,000$ was resold for 6.6 million indicating a 10,000$ price appreciation.
Of course, a few factors explain why Beeple’s work has become so valuable and has garnered such unprecedented traction. For starters, Beeple has built a large fan base of dedicated art connoisseurs and NFT collectors with over 2.5 million followers across his social media platforms.
Secondly, Beeple has proven to be a famously prolific artist and his most iconic piece called “Everydays” is a clear indication of that. This is because apart from his “Everydays” NFT Winkelmann truly does create and publish artworks almost every day with a series of collections and one-of-one individual art pieces being released regularly.
In addition, in parallel with the artist’s dedication and year-long mania phase surrounding NFTs many collectors are starting to view blockchain-based digital art as the next logical step in collectability practices and as the most aesthetically appealing structure to store collect and trade art moving forward.
And for those collectors who believe this is indeed the case the escalating prices of NFTs are minuscule compared to what NFTs might be worth down the road. Beeple’s artwork ‘Everydays’ the first 5000 days is a collage of 5000 different digital images tokenized and stored on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token.
Beeple took direct inspiration from the work of British artist Tom Judd and began working on the project daily on 1st May 2007 almost 15 years ago. What we find intriguing about the 5000 days NFT is that the art piece contains images and figures inspired by pop culture, the entertainment industry, and politics including representations of jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. They’re also all arranged chronologically.
Everydays NFT was purchased by Singapore-based programmer Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto investor, art Aficionado, and the founder of the Metapurse NFT project.
Sundaresan reportedly purchased the NFT for 42,329 Eth or approximately 60.3 million dollars at the time, making Beeple’s everyday art pieces together with PAK’s Merge collection arguably the most expensive one-of-one NFT sale to date.
Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza 313 NFT
The recent resurgence in NFT market activity has seen projects like The ‘Board Ape Yacht Club’, The ‘Crypto Punks, and blockchain-based gaming protocols such as ‘Axie Infinity’ dominate much of the conversation.
But amid all that hype the Ethereum-based generative art collection ‘Art blocks’ has quietly been stacking up hundreds of millions of dollars of trading volume and in august of last year, it marked one of its largest single NFT sales to date.
This was for ‘Fedenza number 313’ by American generative artist Tyler Hobbs. It sold for a mind-blowing 1000 each or just over 3.3 million dollars at the time it was purchased. But what’s astounding about this is that the artwork was previously traded for 0.580 ETH or about 1400$ on June, 11th shortly after being minted marking a gigantic return on investment for the previous owner.
‘Art Blocks’ launched in November of 2020 and the collection in itself which spans more than 140 different generative art drops by varying creators exploded in value over the last year.
Tyler Hobbs’s Fidenza line launched in June of 2021 and has quickly become one of the most widely recognized art block collections with NFT floors currently sitting at approximately 70 ETH.
The Fidenza collection spans 999 pieces each based on an algorithm that generates a distinctive artwork upon minting. Because they’re stored on-chain as NFTs Fidenza are unique and non-interchangeable with one another but they’re all characterized by patterns of colorful rectangles and squares that populate the scene.
The second most expensive Fedenza went for 950 ETH about four months ago. However like with most fine art NFT collections the price of the asset is primarily determined by the quality, refinement, and intricacy of the piece. And to be frank, we can see why this Fedenza here went for the price it did.
Sotheby’s “This Changed Everything” NFT
In 1989 British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-lee invented the world wide web in a moment that changed the world forever. And from June, 20th to June 23th 2021 Sotheby’s held an auction for an early implementation of the web written by Berners-lee himself tokenized as an ERC 721 NFT on Ethereum.
The auctioned NFT includes the original archive of dated and time-stamped files containing the source code written between 1990 and 1991, with the files containing code with approximately 9,000 lines which include implementations of three different coding languages.
The NFT furthermore showcases black and white animated visualizations of code lasting over 30 minutes and even a personal letter written by sir Tim himself reflecting on the entire implementation process.
This worldwide web source code NFT sold for a staggering 5.4 million dollars in late June of 2021 and because of its cultural significance as one of the earliest technical expressions of the internet, we can understand its selling price. Especially, because without the advent of the web our beloved crypto and NFTs wouldn’t even be here.
MAYC Serum NFT
The NFT development startup Yuga Labs first created the Bored Aipac Club in April of 2021 as a 10,000-item collection of grungy simians minted on Ethereum.
Yuga Labs didn’t simply intend to have the Bored Ape Yacht Club as its main and sole collection and it subsequently set out to create an additional collection of 20,000 Mutant Apes.
10,000 of these were airdropped to all existing Bored Ape holders and the other ten thousand were sold via dutch auction on August 28th, 2021.
For original BAYC holders to access their Mutants, they weren’t airdropped the NFTs themselves. Instead, they were given a little something called Serums.
In essence, a Serum is a utility-infused NFT that mutates the collection’s primates. To mutate a board ape with a Serum, an individual must have both a bought an NFT and a Serum NFT in their wallet before using the mutating feature on the MAYC website. But once expended for the mutation the Serum NFT is burnt essentially making it extremely scarce and potentially priceless in the future.
Not all Serums are alike and they range across m1, m2, and m3 Serums depending on their mutation power and scarcity.
Thus, given these features in early January 2022, the rare Serum number 69 for Yuga Labs is BAYC sold for approximately 1500 ETH or around Six Million Dollars at the time making it the largest sale for a Serum to date.
The serum was purchased by Deepak Thapliyal the CEO of the blockchain Tech startup chain. But not without competition from Andreas and Horowitz backed metaphor capital which fell about 250,000 short.
In a Twitter feed dated January,3rd. The CEO shed light on the logic behind his recent purchase and outlined the future potential he sees in holding an M3 Serum.
Now out of all the existing serums, M3s are the rarest with only eight of them being released to the community. However, given that most M3 Serums have already been deployed to Mutate board Apes. This could potentially drive major market demand in the future as they are inherently one of the scarcest assets within the BAYC ecosystem.
BAYC Auction At Sotheby’s NFT
Speaking of the BAYC, next up we have the Bored Ape Yacht club auction held at Sotheby’s in September of 2021.
Sotheby’s auctioned off two separate NFT bundles one containing 101 rare board apes which sold for a mouth-watering 24.4 million dollars and another one containing 101 board ape kennel club NFTs which went for a very respectable 1.8 million dollars.
Both bundles showcase a rare collection of some of the finest NFTs within the Bored Ape Yacht club ecosystem with some unique feature arrangements such as Sailor Hats, Eye patches, Bone necklaces, Funky Furs, Stud Earrings, and other groovy wearables.
9 Cryptopunks
Another massive NFT sale held at Christie’s was the one in May of 2021 which saw a collection of nine crypto punks go for 16.9 million dollars.
CryptoPunks is one of the earliest NFT projects and in the last year alone they’ve become increasingly valuable as collector items.
CryptoPunks project was created by Lava labs in 2017 and was launched as a 10,000 item collection of pixel art portraits of people, zombies, aliens, and apes.
Each NFT was algorithmically generated and features different attributes such as hairstyle, glasses, or hat. Some traits are rarer than others and those tend to make for more valuable CryptoPunks.
What’s particularly noteworthy about the BAYC and CryptoPunk sales is the evident paradigm shift that centuries-old auction houses such as Sotheby’s and christie’s are currently undergoing.
As they start to progressively understand and appreciate the value, social impact, cultural significance, and economy of non-fungible tokens.
Moreover, Sotheby’s has become So-NFT friendly to the point that it’s decided to build its metaverse ecosystem to host in-house auctions called the Sotheby’s metaverse.
Pretty cool right?!
Republic Realm Purchases Virtual Land Plots
The latest hot real estate market isn’t the Italian riviera or the heart of manhattan. It’s in the metaverse where gamers are flocking and digital property sales are reaching new all-time highs.
A growing number of investment firms are starting to acquire digital land in worlds such as the Sandbox and Decentraland where players simulate real-life pursuits from shopping to attending a concert or event.
This is because NFT-powered metaverse concepts are slowly but surely starting to enter traditional economic structures.
A sentiment that was popularized by facebook’s recent rebranding to meta platforms in October of last year. On top of that, there are ongoing speculations revolving around the role that digital real estate will play in future digital economies, where ownership of underlying assets could very well prove to be an invaluable financial proposition.
This is precisely the reason why Republic Realm an entity that invests in and develops virtual real estate and other digital assets purchased a plot of virtual land in the sandbox metaverse in late November of last year for a total of 4.3 million Dollars.
Republic Realm purchased the land plot from OG gaming studio Atari marking the biggest metaverse property sale recorded to date. With its recent purchase republic realm now owns about 2500 plots of digital land across 19 worlds, which makes for a rather impressive metaverse portfolio.
Metaverse Group Buys Digital Land “Decentraland”
The new record set by republic realm broke the one set just one week prior by the metaverse group a subsidiary of tokens.com. Which purchased a plot of virtual real estate in the DecentraLand ecosystem for a total of 618,000 MANA tokens or approximately 2.43 million dollars at the time.
This land plot purchased by the Metaverse Group is located in the so-called ‘Fashion District’ of the decentral metaverse.
tokens.com stated that it would use the 116 parcel estate to expand the digital fashion industry by onboarding major brands in the space and effectively bridging the gap between their traditional business models and the metaverse economy.
Virtual land aside in-game NTFS deserves to be mentioned here as they’ve created a market structure of their own following the rise of game phi and play to earn ecosystems.
Triple Mystic Axies NFT
Last on our list we have the mighty Axie Infinity with its triple mystic axes.
As a quick background, Axia infinity soared in popularity as a pokemon-like play-to-earn blockchain game. Especially, in areas where gaming is particularly popular such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and other areas of southeast Asia.
To play the game players are required to own a set or team of axes to battle with other players and generate yield. But given the recent surge in the crypto gaming market, these in-game NFTs have become increasingly hard and expensive to acquire due to the steep price appreciation on some of these Tamagotchi-Esque NFTs.
In fact, in November of 2020 two of the game’s most expensive assets namely triple mystic axes number 1046 and 3224 were sold for a total of 500 ETH equating to approximately 1.1 million dollars at the time.
Now out of all the axes in existence, mystic axes have proven to be the most sought after and utility-rich NFTs in the game as they ensure lucrative gameplay and some of the highest yield-bearing functionalities.
This in turn has opened up an entirely new spectrum in gaming economies and has led to the development of new financial ecosystems built on in-game utility and gameplay opportunities and maybe it could prove to be the catalyst for the creation of the next gaming 2.0 model.
Final Verdict
We all know that NFTs have been all the rage over the last year and a half, and we wanted to give you a full overview of some of the most expensive ones that have been sold. But we do indeed expect something of a pullback in the NFT space at some point in the future. And this is simply since NFTs is an inherently volatile asset class and nothing can go up forever even in the crypto market.
That being said we firmly believe that NFTs are in some shape or form here to stay and they will play an instrumental role in the evolution of our digital and creator economies.
While not all NFTs are guaranteed to succeed in the long term we do foresee many other collections coming out of the space in the future that could very well yield some rather interesting returns perhaps the next BAYC or CryptoPunks movement for instance.
So please carry out your proper due diligence before you allocate your hard-earned money to any NFT protocol. however revolutionary it might initially seem. And make sure to watch this space folks because you never know the next big thing in NFTs might just be around the corner.
