Sotheby’s ‘Gold Fur’ Bored Ape NFT auction will test art world demand again

A curated batch of Bored Ape Yacht Club-centric Ethereum NFTs from Yuga Labs will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on June 18, which will be a test of the staying power of Ape-themed assets in the visual arts community.

The lot of collectibles includes an NFT profile photo (PFP) of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, adorned with a leather work vest and a “sushi chef headband.” Known as Monkey #8552one of the NFT’s main selling points is its former, now bankrupt owner, aside from the Ape’s solid gold fur of course.

Once an asset of Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a crypto hedge fund that was wiped out amid the widespread market tumult of 2022, the NFT is joined by other digital works of art. These include two gold fur NFTs from Yuga’s Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection and an image of a dog from Yuga’s Bored Ape Kennel Club line.

NFTs from profile photo collections typically contain different, randomized features. In addition to the provenance of a collectible, they can also have a major impact on the value of an NFT.

For example, the cheapest Ape for sale on the secondary market would cost someone around $48,000 today, according to NFT price floor. But only 46 of the 10,000 monkeys were minted with gold fur, and the last one sold in March for $933,000 or 247 ETH.

Of on-chain sales followed by the NFT marketplace Open sea, nine of Bored Ape’s top twelve sales were for gold-furred monkeys. And the property has benefited Sotheby’s before. In 2021, the art house facilitated a record setting $3.4 million sale of a bored monkey with golden fur.

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

Meanwhile, the NFT researcher who posts on Twitter as Punk9059 marked the prices 3AC initially paid for the assets. When he raised Ape and Kennel Club NFTs in July 2021, the account stated that 3AC coughed up 106 ETH, approximately $401,000 at current prices.

As a spin-off collection launched in August 2021, Mutant Apes could be created using a “mutant serum” token awarded to existing holders of the Bored Ape collection. Bored Monkey owners had to ‘transform’ their existing monkey, or purchase one from the batch of 10,000 additional Mutant Apes released in a public sale by Yuga.

While ultra-rare Bored Apes can still fetch high prices, prices of more common examples have fallen dramatically since Apes’ highest minimum price from nearly $430,000 in April 2022. Over the past year, that figure, known as the floor price, has fallen from $84,250 (46 ETH) to $47,500 (12.6 ETH) during Ethereum’s upward climb.

Artworks from the aforementioned 3AC, which were sold by administrators to cover outstanding debts, have previously caused a stir at Sotheby’s. A year ago, Ringers #879, a generative artwork known as “The Goose,” drew one $6.2 million saleincluding auction house costs.

Declutter contacted Bouhanna and other Sotheby’s representatives for more details about the planned Bored Ape auction, but did not immediately receive a response.

Edited by Andrew Hayward