Chicago Man Unknowingly Purchased Four Original Banksy Pieces
By Lisa White in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 14, 2013 6:00PM
Does this Chicago resident look familiar to you? If so, you might want to let your friend know that he needs to get the new wall art he purchased this weekend in Manhattan insured. New York CIty has been losing its collective shit as English artist Banksy creates a new piece of work in a different location every day this month, for his open air art show Better Out Than In (our sister site Gothamist has extensive coverage).
The street artist has ben sharing a photo and general area of each location online, and over the weekend he posted this below video documenting his 13th piece of the month. The video shows an older man selling “spray art” on the edge of Central Park—but what the people walking by failed to notice was that these were actually original Banksy works. By the end of the day, only three people purchased pieces (going for $60 each)—but will any of them find out that they now own valuable works of art? These were all real creations signed by Banksy himself.
One of the three sales was to a man from Chicago who stated that he was decorating his new home and said “I just need something for the walls.” He bought four pieces at $60 each. If anyone wants to clue this man in on the whole charade, he could be looking at owning artwork worth much more than $240. On the other hand, if you know this guy and you are a horrible person, offer to buy the “crap he bought in New York” for double the price and you’d have a pretty sweet investment.
Another piece that was sold this weekend is supposedly already for sale on eBay. If you watch the video, the second woman is the buyer of said piece, and if you place a bid, you'll be able to verify it's authentic through Pest Control.
UPDATE: As of 2:30 p.m. the listing on eBay for one of the Banksy pieces has been taken down. We last checked it around 2 p.m. and it was already up to $405. The seller still hadn't acknowledged that it was a Banksy piece, so maybe they wised up? We still wouldn't be surprised to see one of them somewhere on the market soon.
UPDATE (again): Now it seems to be back up again, newly listed by the same seller. Well this is all kinds of fishy. We'll keep an eye on it and see what happens.