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NFT artist lets visitors mint artworks, and a record-breaking Harry Potter book sale
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NFT gallery lets visitors mint the works they already bought
A recent show by NFT artist Tyler Hobbs asked participants to mint their own NFTs…using their own laptops. Visitors paid between $120,000 and $400,000 for the honor.
During opening night, visitors were brought one by one to a room where they were then asked to create the NFT, which was revealed to the audience (and Hobbs) later that night.
Bright Moments, the Soho gallery that held the exhibition, focuses on bringing the metaverse into the real world. Its ultimate goal is to bring the “crypto-skeptical” on board by showing them how it works in real life.
Our Take: Spectacle is a big part of art and it sells. But a good show is helped by IRL interactions.
NFTs are exciting, but there’s something unparalleled about a real life spectacle. Hobbs’s installation meshes the excitement of an NFT with the thrill of a good show. The price of top NFTs remain high (works from Hobbs’s own Fidenza series currently sell for a minimum of $300,000), leading some collectors to demand a bit of an extravaganza to justify the price.
First edition of Harry Potter book smashes book auction record
A rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold for $471,000 at auction last week. Only 500 copies of that specific edition were printed.
Heritage Auctions, which sold the book, said the sale was the highest price paid for a HP book and a world record for a work of 20th century fiction.
An unnamed American collector bought the book, which went for 5x more than its pre-sale estimate of $70,000.
Our Take: Potterheads are fully grown and they’re buying up souvenirs of their youth.
The big bucks in book collecting are usually rare editions of famous books. An early copy of Frankenstein recently sold for a record $1.2 million, and the most expensive book ever sold was a first edition of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America, which went for more than $13 million. The first HP book came out in 1997 (I know, I know), which means there’s a whole generation of adults who grew up with the books and have the cash to buy up the rare first editions.
✨ AROUND THE INTERNET
Draft Kings has teamed up with the NFL Player’s Association to bring some sort of “gamified NFT collaboration” next season. All that we know is that players will be involved.
We’re back in the age of Jesus toast. College assignments graded by Elon Musk just sold for nearly $8,000 at auction.
Stormy Daniels is selling the dress she wore the night she allegedly slept with Donald Trump. The winner get the dress itself and a matching NFT.
Bill Russell’s collection of his own memorabilia has been scattered into the wind. More than 400 items, including the last jersey he wore during his career, sold for a total of $7.4 million.
Beware the wrath of gamers: Ubisoft announced its NFT project last week in a YouTube video. It was taken down over the weekend after it got a 96% dislike ratio from angry gamers.
Trying to duck taxes on your crypto investments? Move to Puerto Rico. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.
Can we live in the metaverse and enjoy it? Philosopher David Chalmers says the virtual world can be as good (or as bad) as the real world — it’s about how we design it.
