Rare Batman NFT Art Raises $200,000 in Sale Led by Mysterious Collector

By Robert Stevens

“It's not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us,” said Batman in one of the Christopher Nolan movies. Eh! Turns out it is what we are underneath, at least in the world of non-fungible tokens.

A collection of Batman art, underpinned by verifiably unique, non-fungible cryptocurrencies, just sold for a combined 540.86 ETH, or about $200,000. The art was auctioned on NFT marketplace MakersPlace.

The artwork comes from DC comic artist José Delbo and Trevor Jones, a crypto artist. There are five pieces in the collection, all animations or PNG files of the Dark Knight. 

Though publicly-viewable—anyone with an internet connection can ctrl-c; ctrl-v the artwork and store it on their hard drive—the cryptocurrency tokens that represent official ownership of the artwork are one-of-a-kind.

A preview image released by Delbo ahead of the upcoming collaboration. Image: Jose Delbo.

A couple of limited edition artworks sold for a few thousand dollars apiece, but the largest sales concluded today. The biggest spender was “Maxstealth,” a pseudonymous collector who also owns a handful of other high-value crypto art pieces.

Maxstealth spent $55,291 on one animation that walks the viewer through Trevor Jones’s graphical illustration of Batman (turns out even fine artists rely on the paint bucket tool) to the tune of a cheesy, high-tempo Batman theme tune.

Maxstealth is as mysterious as Batman himself. Source: Maxstealth's Twitter page.

Then Maxstealth spent $111,3777 to win a bidding war against “Phillector." This was for a grittier animation that slathers Trevor Jones’s paintbrush strokes on an etching of Batman’s profile drawn by José Delbo.

Its description reads: “eventually, the figure emerges and as it does, our hero comes to life, looking directly at the viewer -- but is he grimacing in approval or disgust? We will never know for sure as just before he can say anything, white paint is brushed across the canvas entirely and the process begins again. Only the bat is quick enough to escape.”

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