In October 2018, attendees at a Sotheby's auction watched in awe as Banksy's "Girl with Balloon," which seconds before had just been auctioned for $1.4 million, self-destructed with a shredder mechanism that had been introduced. secretly within its frame.

The moment, captured by the media that attended the auction, was viralized on social networks, surpassing 20 million views. After the event, Banksy himself revealed, through a video on his Instagram account, how years before he had installed the mechanism in the frame with the intention of activating it if the work reached an auction. The artist also admitted that the mechanism had a fault in its activation that caused it to stop earlier than planned, leaving the work half destroyed.

An excellent investment?

The buyer of the work, who has remained anonymous, agreed to purchase the work in its new state. Since then, Banksy's official organization, called Pest Control (Trad: Pest Control) issued the owner a new certificate of authenticity for the work under the new name "Love is in the Bin" (Trad: "Love is in the Bin"). in the trash").

Now, this decision to buy a semi-destroyed work could be quite profitable for the collector, since Sotheby's has announced that "Love is in the Bin" will go up for auction again on October 14 in London with estimated prices of between $5.5 million at $8.3 million dollars.

“Its value has grown tremendously, almost 4 times its original value since last time. But I also think that at the same time, the commercial value of Banksy has grown exponentially”, comments Oliver Barker, director of the European division of Sotheby’s. "It is very rare to find a work by any artist that is an icon not only of the artist, but of the art world," he concluded.

As part of its promotion, the work will be presented to the public in the cities of New York, Tai Pei and Hong Kong prior to its auction.

With information from Fox Business and Reuters