Sotheby’s to Auction 104 CryptoPunks for Estimated $20-$30 Million

Centuries-old English art auction house Sotheby’s has announced it is set to sell off 104 CryptoPunks NFTs in a live New York City auction scheduled for February 23.

Sotheby’s describes Punk It! as its “most important and historic NFT project”. The auction, in which all 104 CryptoPunks will be sold as a single lot, will mark Sotheby’s first dedicated live evening auction for NFTs.

The live evening auction will also bring together the physical and digital in an unprecedented showcase for NFTs and digital art with a presentation on par with the most significant and high-profile sales for Contemporary and Modern art.

Sotheby’s press release

The Punks set to go on sale were all acquired together last July in a single transaction on the blockchain by an anonymous collector, “Ox650d”. This also means that all 104 Punks have the exact same provenance, which makes this collection unique.

What Are CryptoPunks?

CryptoPunks is a collection of 10,000 NFTs released in 2017 by Larva Labs, all of them pixelated portraits of punk rock-inspired faces. Each NFT in the collection is unique and sports various traits and accessories. The collection has become one of the most successful of its kind, with a current floor price of 67.5 ETH, or about US$217,000. Since its launch in 2017, the Punks collection has generated about 683,000 ETH in sales volumes (over US$2 billion).

Single CryptoPunks have sold for astronomical amounts of money. VISA, for instance, paid a whopping US$150,000 to buy a Punk of its own. But if you think that’s a lot of money, the current record price paid for a CryptoPunk at auction is a staggering US$11.8 million.

If you don’t quite have a cool US$12 million casually lying around, DegenData announced last month it would be auctioning off CryptoPunk #5761 along with the business IP and all supporting assets attached for a mere 420 ETH (US$1.36 million).