Collection of Bored Ape NFTs break Sotheby's estimates — with 3 days to go

A set of 101 NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has surpassed the expectations of auction house Sotheby's, well ahead of the auction's closing time.

The collection of dour-faced apes — featuring laser eyes, trippy fur and diamond teeth — has a current bid of $19 million. This is higher than the $12 million to $18 million range that the auction house set ahead of the sale.

Yet the auction still has three days to go, with a closing date of September 9 at 2.01 PM UTC.

Currently the floor price of a bored ape on the open market is 40 ETH ($160,000), giving a general collection of 101 apes a lower bound of $16.16 million. But this collection includes a number of rare apes, potentially making it more valuable.

These include three apes with "solid gold" fur and four with "trippy" fur. It also includes four apes who are unshaven and have bored expressions, dangling pizza out of their mouths — a surprisingly rare trait.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. According to CryptoSlam, it is the fifth highest collection by all-time sales volume. The highest sale yet was for bored ape #7090, which sold for 600 ETH ($2.37 million) three days ago. Last month, NBA icon Stephen Curry aped in, picking one up for $180,000.

The collection also recently spawned another collection of mutant apes — with bored ape holders able to mutate their apes into new, bizarre-looking NFTs.

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