The new must-have item in the world of NFT’s? Apes, apparently. On Thursday, the historic auction house Sotheby’s announced that a collection of 101 computer-generated NFT apes had sold for a whopping $US24 ($33).4 ($33) million. While it’s not the most expensive NFT on the market (that honour goes to Beeple’s $US69.3 ($94) million sale at Christie’s this past March), it’s still more than $US24 ($33) million.
The aforementioned apes are known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 unique NFT’s featuring, well, bored apes: bored apes in party hats, bored apes smoking cigarettes, bored apes wearing 3D glasses, you name it.
Yuga Labs, the collective that rolled out the ape collection earlier this year, explains that each ape is “unique and programmatically generated from over 170 possible traits,” including their clothing, headgear, and bored expressions. And as the club’s website states, “all apes are dope, but some are rarer than others.”
#AuctionUpdate 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs just sold for $24.4 million and 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs achieved $1.8 million in our Ape in! auction – the most significant #BAYC sale to date. Congrats to all the apes out there 🐵🐶 pic.twitter.com/e7UghlgtKy
— Sotheby’s (@Sothebys) September 9, 2021
Apparently, they’re dope enough to be worth obscene amounts of money. The new collection closed well ahead of Sotheby’s initial estimates, which put the apes at anywhere between $US15 ($20) million to $US18 ($24) million, tops. Closing the auction at $US24 ($33),393,000 means that each of these apes sold for roughly $US241,500 ($327,546) a pop.
Even outside of this particular auction, sales of these bored apes have raked in more than $US5 ($7) million for Yuga Labs in the past month, according to publicly available records. On the secondary crypto marketplace OpenSea, there are apes going for close to $US124,000 ($168,181) right now, with others going for the low low price of just over $US109,000 ($147,837).
And those prices are probably going to keep on climbing. Bored Apes are becoming hot commodities among NBA and NFL players, YouTube stars, and at least one musician, Jermaine Dupri. The Apes also snagged a major brand collaboration with Arizona Iced Tea, of all things, last week. Needless to say, the Sotheby’s auction likely won’t be the last multimillion-dollar deal coming for Yuga Labs in the near future.