NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a new kind of digital asset that has exploded in popularity ever since 2021 and don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon in 2022.
While there are many different types of NFTs, the most popular use case is for collecting and trading rare digital assets, such as JPEGs, video files, illustrations, and pixelated profile pictures (many of them).
In this blog post, we will take a look at the 15 most expensive and famous NFT sales of all time.
Keep in mind that the prices listed below are only for the NFTs themselves – not the entire collection. With that said, let’s get started!
15: Crossroads (Beeple) – $6.6 million
While almost everyone knows him as Beeple, his name is Mike Winkelmann. Crossroads originally sold on Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace notorious for its high-end sales.
Nifty Gateway made an announcement that the work had sold by Thursday of that same week, with the piece eventually showing up at an online sale at Christie’s and skyrocketing in price. Bidding had reached $1.8 million and continued through March 11 2021.
This is one Beeple’s major NFT sales. It’s safe to say that Beeple is one of the wealthiest NFT sellers in the world considering how he has several entries in the most expensive and famous NFT hall of fame.
Crossroads is an NFT seeking to spark political conversation and commentary, created as a response to the 2020 presidential election. It basically features a video of a giant, naked Trump with many writings across his body while lying face down in the grass.
Along with Beeple’s previous piece, it was Crossroads another of the fundamental NFT sales that made NFTs so popular in modern times. Perhaps if Beeple had never sold Crossroads and Everydays, NFTs would not be as famous as they are today.
What’s intriguing about this piece is that Beeple himself mentioned that he had different versions of this NFT depending on who won the 2020 United States elections. In truth, the other video NFT featured a victorious Trump should he had won.
Should have the victorious Trump NFT been the released version, would it have fetched the price it had? That’s some interesting food for thought.
14: CryptoPunk #8857 (Larva Labs) – $6.63 million
Up next, we have the sale of CryptoPunk #8857. Anyone who’s into NFTs would die to get their hands on one of the punks, but that goes double for zombie punks. There are only 88 zombie punks in existence, a minimal number considering how there were 10,000 CryptoPunks minted in its only drop.
CryptoPunk #8857 sold for 2,000 ETH, or $6.63 million. At the time, CryptoPunk #8857 became the fourth most expensive NFT sale ever.
13: Right-click and save As Guy (XCOPY) – $7.08 million
This NFT was minted on December 6, 2018, and after another major NFT sale took place, it also became famous enough to warrant its own sale for $7,088,229 or 1600 ETH at the time. It was purchased by rapper Snoop Dogg through SuperRare. At the time, Snoop Dogg was using his NFT pseudonym Cozomo de Medici.
What’s funny is that this NFT was originally only a meme using warped visual loops, made specifically to mock people who do not believe in NFTs or digital art.
12 – Ringers #109 (Dmitri Cherniak) – $7.1 million
Ringers is a generative crypto art collection of 1,000 NFTs created by Cherniak’s special p5js script. It’s the highest-selling Art Bocks Curated collection, each selling out at 0.1 ETH within 20 minutes of being released, and skyrocketing in price on the secondary market.
Cherniak stated that he played for algorithms for years to automate the wrapping of a string around a set of pegs with different layouts.
The one-piece that made history was Ringers #109, selling for 2100 ETH ($7.1 million).
11 – CryptoPunk #7804 (Larva Labs) – $7.6 million
As you can imagine by this point, CryptoPunks are among the highest sold NFT collections in the world. Not only are they the OG’s of NFT collections rising in popularity, but they are also notorious for being some of the first NFTs to be implemented as Twitter profile picture flexes.
CryptoPunk #7804, one of the coveted teal-skinned alien punks smoking a pipe and wearing gangster sunglasses was sold for 4,200 ETH ($7.5 million).
10: CryptoPunk #3100 (Larva Labs) – $7.67 million
This one was one of the first major CryptoPunk sales and also the last on-chain alien punk sales, being one of nine. It happened on March 11, 2021, and was pivotal in the growing interest of the general population in crypto punks.
Despite being one of the exclusive alien punks, CryptoPunk #3100 hasn’t been featured majorly on social media.
9: CryptoPunk #5577 (Larva Labs) – $7.7 million
CryptoPunk #5577 Is the cowboy wearing ape NFT, purchased by the founder of Compound DeFi protocol, Robert Leshner. Funnily enough, Leshner tweeted “Yeehaw” upon purchasing the NFT, prompting many users to congratulate him on his purchase. It was sold on OpenSea for $7.7 million.
8: Cryptopunk #4156 (Larva Labs) – $10.26 million
CryptoPunk #4156 was sold for 650 ETH ($1.26 million) on February 18. The ape trait is only present in 0.24% of crypto punks, which is most likely part of why this one was so expensive overall. It was purchased after an initial $1.25 million sale, marking one of the highest returns on investment from an NFT purchase.
7: Tpunk #3443 (Tpunks) – $10.5 million
Next up, we have Tpunk #3443, which sold for 10.5 million, or 120 million TRX. Tpunk is a collection of 10,000 Avatars existing on the Tron blockchain instead of Ethereum. This one is known as the Joker punk and was purchased by TRON Blockchain founder Justin Sun in August 2021. This is also the most anyone has paid for an NFT on Tron.
Ironically, a pixelated punk project inspired by CryptoPunks ended up selling for more than many of the rarest punks out there.
6: CryptoPunk #7523 (Larva Labs) – $11.8 million
CryptoPunk #7523 comes up next, selling for $11.8 million at Sotheby’s in May 2021. CryptoPunk #7523 is the third rarest punk in the collection, being part of the ultra-rare alien punks featuring blue-green skin and a medical mask.
Its buyer was Israeli entrepreneur Shalom Meckenzie, known for being the largest shareholder of the digital sports company DraftKings.
5: CryptoPunk #5822 (Larva Labs) – $23.7 million
CryptoPunk #5822 was bought by Deepak Thapliyal, the CEO of Chain, for a mind-blowing 8,000 ETH ($23.7 million). This is the most expensive crypto punk sale of all, and one of the notorious alien punks, of which only 0.09% have the trait.
4: Human One (Beeple) – $28,985,000
Even among the most unique of NFTs, Human One manages to stand out as an avant-garde piece of digital art.
Human One is both a physical and digital sculpture, a 7 ft tall rectangular sculpture that features four large LED screens presenting us with an astronaut walking through changing environment. Every display is selected at random every 24 hours.
It cannot get more Beeple than that, except for Beeple’s other NFTs which took over even this one in pricing. Human One is so unique that only Beeple himself could outdo this, as we’ll see in the following entries.
Human One achieved a sky-high $28,985,000 at the auction at Christie’s. It was purchased by Swiss entrepreneur Ryan Zurrer.
3: Clock (Julian Assange & Pak) – $52.7 million
Next up, we have Clock, an NFT that shows a timer counting every day that Julian Assange has spent in prison. AssangeDAO won the bid for Julian Assange and Pak’s Clock NFT, which sold for 16,953 ETH, at the time equating $52.7 million.
Assange is the editor and publisher of WikiLeaks, possibly facing 175 years in jail and extradition to the US. The purpose of the auction is to raise money to help finance his legal defense. After his arrest, the organization AssangeDAO has made its primary mission the fight for Assange’s liberty.
The sale became notorious due to how controversial Assange’s case has been, especially considering how Park is an artist who values their anonymity above all things, becoming one of the highest-grossing living artists while remaining anonymous through his entire career.
2: Everydays: The First 5000 Days (Beeple) – $69 million
It was Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, that brought the word NFTs to the top of search engines for a whole season. People got to know that NFTs existed and began getting into the space by the time Christie’s auctioned this immense JPEG file for a mind-blowing $69 million.
If there’s any piece that made Beeple famous (and rich, obviously), it’s this one. Everydays: The First 5000 Days is currently owned by Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as MetaKovan. Sundaresan is a crypto investor and also the founder of the Metapurse NFT project, based in Singapore.
1: The Merge (Pak) – $91.8 million
Managing to outsell even Beeple, anonymous artist Pak’s NFT “The Merge” sold for $91.8 million in December 2021 on Nifty Gateway.
The sale has set the record for the highest ever sold NFT and also artwork publicly sold by a living artist. Pak set a record at Art Basel.
The Merge offered buyers several masses, known as singular tokens that could be bought as single pieces or in bulk. The sale was hosted for three days, with an incredible 28,000 buyers spending massive amounts of money to buy the possible 266,445 masses. If any of the buyers already owned another artwork by Pak, they could go down to $299.
The Merge was sold as an open edition, from Thursday through Saturday. Interested buyers could purchase any number of tokens starting with a unit price of $US575, increasing to $25 every six hours. The more buyers the artwork got, the bigger their mass got.
Final words
Considering how Pak and Beeple are the creators of the top 3, top 1, and top 2, 4, and 5 most expensive NFT sales, it’s safe to say that both of them are the most prolific living NFT artists in the world. Collectively, both of them have made multi-millionaire fortunes by selling NFTs.
Ready to learn more about how you can follow their steps? Check out our guides on how to make money with NFTs here!
