Art Market Report - December 4
A weekly report on the NFT Art Market, covering 1/1s, generative art, editions and other important news.
It feels like the start of a bull market. It's interesting to note that while NFT ETH volumes have hit a recent high, the number of unique buying wallets remains relatively constant. Having waited for the right moment, experienced art buyers are beginning to sweep the floors before crypto profits flow into art and drive up prices (which will still take a while). This could be your last opportunity to purchase art at discounted prices.
1/1s
Big moves on ACK’s secondary market. The Mad Pianist was sold to Mr. Fox for 21.5 ETH (OTC), The Void sold to Austin Grier for 18 ETH, and Sight For Sore Eyes sold to Tagline for 16 ETH.
Collection Bold Pepes by BoldLeonidas had 40 sales on Foundation this week, a total of ~30 ETH. Notably, BoldLeonidas has been doing comics every day for Mando Minutes.
Starchild Station by Grant Yun was collected by AOTM for 14 ETH on SuperRare’s secondary market. It was previously sold for 1.7 ETH in August 2021. The piece was one of Grant Yun’s early mints in March 2021, where you can see his signature style forming.
Kyoto's Autumn Wind | 京都の秋風 by Derech was collected by k4kxxx for 6.5 ETH, reaching another ATH for the artist on SuperRare.
Orchard of Absurd Epochs by Botto was collected by Bharat Krymo for 5.069 ETH on SuperRare.
GENERATIVE ART & EDITIONS
In a little over an hour, FLAMINGODAO swept 26 art collections, spanning large generative & AI art collections, Beeple, XCOPY, etc. totaling 448 ETH (~$1M). See the full list here here reported by Rodo.
The following day, ChrisF from FLAMINGODAO tweeted: “Besides playing the classics, we've been going deep on an amazing artist in an emerging category. Should be sharing that soon.”
A comment by sonso.eth I find interesting: “This is a massive bet by @FLAMINGODAO on networked assets. If you follow any of the big names from Flamingo you know the outsized growth of networked assets is a core belief of the team.”
According to article Storing Value in Digital Objects published by Derek Edws:
More Objects, More Attention. Allowing multiple owners to own unique objects within a single collection opens up the opportunity for generating more attention from a larger pool of incentivized holders.
The continued success of pioneer generative media projects like CryptoPunks and Chromie Squiggle demonstrates that a single, unified collection of iterative works can generate compounding network effects, a benefit that can far outweigh the scarcity benefits of a single object.
As a result, collections with a large set of unique editions can become very networked with attention at sizes of 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 outputs. This trend, which started with unique generative objects, is now starting to spill over to non-unique digital editions in large quantities, illustrating the network effects that are achievable with a large collection supply.
Perils of Sēsē by All Seeing Seneca (collection of 2,880) had a 498 ETH trading volume on OS since the release on 11/30. “Perils of Sēsē” is an illustrative generative-meets-hand drawn digital art series. The artwork pays homage to the aesthetics and structure of storybooks and analog animation techniques, revealing the artist’s take on the generative genre.
Views by DeltaSauce (collection of 499) sold out on BrianDrops in less than 2 minutes at the mint price of 0.1 ETH. Current floor is at 0.94 ETH. It had a 258 ETH trading volume on OS since the release on 11/30. Views is a collection of artwork exploring the concept of windows being portals, presenting glimpses into various realities. Learn more about the story of Views here, where DeltaSauce talked about the his art journey, developments of the AI tooling, and his love of cinema.
Ringers #21 was sold for 82 ETH. It was previously bought by rudya for 1.25 ETH in Feb 2021, who had held it for almost 3 years.
SIMULACRUM (edition of 42), 2nd piece minted fully on-chain in XCOPY’s FRESH HELL collection, was raffled to holders for 33 allowlist spots, for 2 ETH mint price and 0 royalty. Current price is at 7 ETH.
Same week on XCOPY’s secondary market: RESIST (2019, KnownOrigin, edition of 25) was sold for 12 ETH, and Rabble 11 (2020, Async Art) sold for 16.99 ETH.
mae released postcards | 012, thus completing the full postcards set, which started in the beginning of the year. As a timed open edition series, the collection of 12 postcards eventually had 1,835 editions minted. As stated on mae’s website: “i started postcards for a number of reasons - to challenge some ideas in our community around scarcity, supply and demand, legacy and reward systems, artist longevity, creativity, exploration…”
INDUSTRY NEWS
Celebrating 3 years of Art Blocks 🎉 which revolutionized the history of generative art by bringing it onto blockchain and to an ever-larger community.
Now on view at Sotheby's Los Angeles through 20 December — ThankYouX's solo exhibition inertia presents a new body of works that explore the boundaries of canvas and the dynamics of movement in both traditional and digital artwork.
NEXT WEEK
Christie’s announced the last digital art auction of the year Next Wave: The Miami Edit, featuring artworks by 24 artists working with a diverse range of mediums, with estimates ranging from 1–40 ETH. All works are on view from 7–8 December at The Gateway Miami at the Faena Forum presented by Now Media, open for bidding from 5–12 December.
Time-limited print edition of Chromie Squiggle #8107 will be available from December 7 on Avant Arte.
Ringers 🫡