The Most Expensive NFT Art Ever Sold

An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a physical or digital asset that exists on a blockchain and cannot be replicated; and these digital assets have been selling for eye-widening amounts lately.

NFTs made headlines throughout 2021, despite the first NFT being created in 2014. During this period, artists like Beeple, Pak, and Tyler Hobbs regularly sold their NFT art for over six figures per NFT. 

In 2021 NFTs were used to form inclusive clubs, the most popular being Bored Ape Yacht Club, with a floor price of 77.69 ETH (around $120,770 as of August 2022). They’ve also expanded into gaming, music, and, most importantly, modern art.

NFTs are now found in art galleries worldwide, including the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Superchief gallery in New York, and Atlanta’s ABV gallery. As they become more popular, innovative new art pieces continue to sell for millions of dollars. 

This article will cover the top 10 most expensive NFT art pieces ever sold. 

Right-click and Save As Guy — $7.08 million

Right-click and Save As Guy was purchased by Snoop Dogg, who is known as an early adopter of NFTs, owning a Bored Ape and NFTs from several other collections. This NFT was created as a satire of people who don’t understand how NFTs work and the worth of crypto art. 

https://superrare.com/artwork/right-click-and-save-as-guy-1154

The NFT description is “Why would I buy it when I can right click and save as?” which is a common objection to NFTs. The NFT now serves as a reminder of how valuable NFTs can be and how blockchain technology focuses on the receipt of art, not the art itself, when it comes to ownership. 

CryptoPunk #3100 – $7.6 million

CryptoPunk #3100 is one of 10,000 unique CryptoPunks released for free in 2017. The collection is extremely popular amongst NFT art collectors, with many selling for over $1 million. CryptoPunk #3100 sold for $7.6 million due to two unique traits. Firstly, it’s one of nine alien avatars ever released, and secondly, it had a headband, with only 450 other punks having headbands, making it a unique combination. 

CryptoPunk #5577 – $7.7 million

CryptoPunk #5577 was one of the biggest sellers in early 2022, selling for a whopping $7.7 million when the market slowed down. It was purchased by Robert Leshner, who tweeted “Yeehaw” to announce his Cryptopunk purchase, which features a cowboy hat. 

TPunk #3442 – $10.5 million

TPunks is a spin-off from traditional Cryptopunks. Also known as Tron’s version of CryptoPunks, TPunk #3442 resembled the Joker and was bought by the Tron co-founder, Justin Sun, for $10.5 million. Despite paying a huge sum for the NFT, Sun donated it to the APENFT marketplace. 

Alien Cryptopunk #7523 – $11.75 million

Alien CryptoPunk #7523 is also known as the “Covid Alien,” featuring a mask similar to those worn throughout the 2020 pandemic.

It’s the second most expensive Cryptopunk to ever be sold and features three unique features alongside its alien skin:

  • Earring (2459 punks have this).
  • Knitted cap (419 punks have this).
  • Medical Mask (175 punks have this).

It was purchased by Shalom Meckenzie, who owns the largest share of DraftKings.

CryptoPunk #5822 – $23.7 million

CryptoPunk #5822 is the most expensive CryptoPunk ever sold and is the rarest of the collection. It was sold to Deepak Thapliyal, the CEO of Chain, for $23.7 million. As well as being an alien, it’s one of 333 Cryptopunks with a bandana. 

HUMAN ONE – $28.9 million

HUMAN ONE was created by Beeple and sold at Christie’s auction for $28.9 million. It was a follow-up of a previous project named The First 5000 Days, which we’ll cover later in this list. The NFT is a physical and digital technology hybrid, featuring an astronaut walking through different landscapes. It’s unique because Beeple coded a smart contract into the NFT, allowing them to change the art displayed. This means unlike other NFTs, which are static, HUMAN ONE will be continuously changing. 

Clock – $52.7 million

Unlike other NFTs on this list, Clock was designed for a social cause. It was created by the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Pak; it works as a digital counter for the days Assange has been in London’s Belmarsh Prison for espionage charges. 

The NFT was created as a fundraiser for Assange’s defense and sold for $52.7 million in February 2022 to AssangeDAO, a decentralized organization (DAO) made up of over 10,000 Assange supporters. Clock is part of a collection of 29,000 NFTs, all working as tokenized messages. 

The First 5000 Days – $69.3 million

The First 5000 Days is another masterpiece created by Beeple, showcasing a collage of 5000 pictures of each day over thirteen years. The NFT was sold at Christie’s first digital art auction in March 2021, selling to Singapore-based investor Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as MetaKovan, who founded the Metapurse NFT project.

As of September 2022, The First 5000 days is the fourth most expensive work from a living artist ever sold at auction.

The Merge – $91.8 million

The Merge is a collection of NFTs created by Pak, purchased by 28,983 people who purchased 321,00 shares, each of which was an NFT. The auction price for each piece started at $575 though it increased by $25 every six hours. This sale made Pak the highest-selling living artist in history, breaking a record set by Jeff Koon in 1986. 

Final Thoughts: Will NFT Prices Continue To Rise?

As NFT art continues to evolve, new artists will continue bringing unique art to the blockchain. However, many of these sales occurred during the first NFT bull run and could therefore be seen as inflated. 

According to NonFungible, NFT sales fell 47% during the first quarter of 2022 compared to the final quarter of 2021, with NFT sales falling an additional 75% from May to June, according to data from OpenSea. 

In August 2022, NFT sales were less than $700 million for the first time since June 2021 ($327 million), with many high-value projects losing their value. This suggests that we might wait a while for another NFT to break into this top 10 list. 

Nonetheless, these top 10 NFT art pieces show the potential of NFT art and how it could revolutionize the way we collect art in the future.  

How and Where to Buy NFTs: A Beginner’s Guide

Few predicted NFTs would suddenly become the talk of the town in 2021 when they were first introduced in 2014. Reports show that NFT trading volume was around $10 million in Q3 2021, a massive 704% increase from the previous quarter. This was just the start.

To many, NFTs add a visually appealing and creative element to the crypto world often perceived as excessively techy and complicated. 

Afterimage, audio, and video NFTs too hold, with NFT shards on their way, crypto investors are scrambling to jump on the fast-moving NFT bandwagon in time. 

If you wish to become an NFT investor, this article will explain the steps of how to buy an NFT and where to buy them, introducing you to the most popular marketplaces.

Where to Buy NFTs

There are different marketplaces to buy different types of NFTs and each levy a specific fee for transacting on their platform, so you should aim to choose a cost-effective platform for buying your NFTs.

OpenSea

OpenSea, established in 2017 by Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer, is the biggest marketplace to buy, sell, and trade different types of NFTs across marketplaces and Blockchains. The company is based in North America and has its headquarters in New York City.

The platform hosts around 30 million NFTs on Ethereum, Polygon, and Klaytn blockchains. Apart from providing a platform to trade in NFTs, Open Sea aims to provide an integrated marketplace where developers can build and launch their NFTs. It supports Ether and around 150 other crypto tokens. 

So you can use the OpenSea marketplace for buying a range of NFTs such as art, game NFTs, sports and music NFTs, utility NFTs such as keys to own gaming collectibles or gaming DAOs, enter particular Discord communities, and so on.

Binance NFT

Binance is a crypto exchange as well as a popular NFT marketplace. It was established as a crypto exchange in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and was based in China. Later, the company headquarters moved to the Cayman Islands.

People can buy, mint, and trade NFTs with the Binance NFT marketplace. It hosts some top NFT creators such as X-Metaverse, Big Time Studios, NFT_Pride, NFKings, and Seek Tiger. You can access different NFT collections such as Mafia Land NFTs, DinoX World Avatars, GiiiO role NFT, X-Metaverse Box, and Atlantis Metaverse Genesis NFT. Binance NFT also hosts features such as the mystery box feature from time to time where players get a chance to win rare and unique NFTs.

Aside from Gaming NFTs, the platform also offers NFTs from categories like Art, Sports, Entertainment, Collectibles, E-sports, and Premium NFTs.

Foundation

The Foundation marketplace brings creators and collectors together on a platform to build and trade NFTs. It was established in February 2021 and is owned by Kayvon Tehranian hailing from San Francisco, California. Through Foundation, collectors can mint our buy images, video, and 3D artwork. A creator can create an art NFT on Foundation only through an invitation received by another creator, unlike other NFT platforms.

Rarible

Rarible was founded by Moscow-based Alexei Falin and Alex Salnikov in 2019.  It is headquartered in Delaware, United States. It hosts NFTs on Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, and Flow blockchain and features a massive NFT collection ranging from art, photography, games, metaverse, music, domains, DeFi, Memes, Punks, NSFW, etc. 

The software-giant Adobe partnered with Rarible in Dec 2021 to display content credentials of the listed NFTs to make it easy to protect and verify digital content.

SuperRare

This NFT marketplace was launched in 2018, where NFT lovers can collect and trade mainly art-oriented NFTs. 

The platform introduced its token in 2021 when the artists and collectors in the community formed their DAO. Some of the prominent investors at SuperRare include Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher, and Samsung Next. The company is owned by John Crain, Johnathan Perkins, and Charles Crain and is based in the United States.

Project Specific Marketplaces

You can also buy specific NFT assets from their respective marketplaces. For example, NBA Top Shot is the marketplace to purchase official GIFs from the National Basketball Association. There is also an NFL All Day market for limited-edition NFL moments. Music lovers can visit the Musician Marketplace to buy NFTs of music compositions and platforms like Async Art, explicitly meant for programmable art. 

There are dedicated marketplaces for particular NFT-based game items, such as Axie Marketplace for items used in the popular ‘Axie Infinity’ game. It also has its own token, and the users should have these tokens to buy things from the Axie Marketplace. Mintable is another platform for unique music, art, games, animation, and media collectibles.

SolSea, another marketplace on Solana, lets creators mint NFTs with embedded licenses and display the Rarity Rank of the NFTs listed. 

Other NFT marketplaces include Nifty Gateway, Thetadrop, etc. NFTs on the Rarible and SuperRare marketplace is also available on OpenSea.

Let us now move on to the steps to buy an NFT.

How to Buy NFTs

  1. Buy Crypto Tokens from a CeFi or DeFi Exchange and Add Funds in the Crypto Wallet

First, you need to have the crypto tokens to possess your desired collectibles. You should buy the tokens supported in the NFT marketplace from where you wish to buy NFTs. Some marketplaces have their own tokens to transact. You can purchase these tokens from any DeFi exchange such as Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, etc. 

Once purchased, you should send the tokens to your wallet, like the Metamask wallet, to be able to use them for the purchase. You can check here if you want to learn how to set up the metamask wallet. Remember to have sufficient units of the crypto token in your wallet to pay for the NFT and the Gas fees involved in the transaction; the Gas fee is the transaction charge for the computation effort involved in facilitating transactions on the Ethereum Blockchain. Gas fees vary according to the traffic on the network. 

  1. Open the Marketplace

You can now open your chosen NFT marketplace and register on it. You will then scroll through the different types of NFTs offered. You can filter through the various collections offered to hunt for the NFT you wish to possess.

  1. Place Your Bid

You will find items under ‘Auction,’ where you can bid the price you wish to pay, or you can buy the item directly. NFT sellers auctioning items provide the Auction time, the previous selling price, and the cryptocurrency they are accepting from the buyers on the marketplace.

  1. Payment

Link your wallet to the marketplace using the ‘Connect Wallet’ button to proceed with the purchase. Once the transaction is successful, you will see the amount deducted and find the NFT stored in your wallet. You can also store your NFTs on offline hardware wallets such as Trezor or Ledger.

The NFT value is generally determined by markets, with floor prices naturally setting the bottom-end range. Other factors could be the uniqueness and the artist’s reputation.

Final Thoughts: Keep Your NFTs Safe! 

This should be about everything that you need to know for you to be able to buy an NFT. One last word of advice: if you are an NFT enthusiast and wish to mint and trade NFTs, you should be careful of NFT scams that can make you lose your crypto funds and NFTs through phishing attacks on your crypto wallets. 

Keep in mind NFTs and cryptocurrency is very new and they can be volatile– you should never invest more than you can afford to lose in a volatile market such as NFTs.