A bottle of champagne featuring a Bored Ape Yacht Club character on the label (BAYC champagne bottle) has sold for $2.5 million, likely setting the record for the most expensive wine bottle ever sold.
A magnum bottle of Chateau Avenue Foch, 2017 has presumably broken auction records as it sold for a whopping $2.5 million. The kicker? The bottle prominently features a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT (BAYC) character; thus, it’s a BAYC champagne bottle.
The previous record set for a bottle of bubbly has been eclipsed by the $2.5 million auction price it sold for. It is also presumed that the BAYC-laden champagne bottle has become the most expensive wine bottle ever sold.
The BAYC Champagne Bottle
Cryptocurrency investors and brothers Giovanni and Pierre Buono purchased the BAYC champagne bottle in a private sale last month. However, it’s not just any bottle.
What makes this magnum of Chateau Avenue Foch, 2017 utterly extraordinary is that it is printed with five pieces of BAYC NFT art. Moreover, purchasing the bottle means acquiring the digital versions of the NFTs and gaining intellectual property (IP) rights to those.
“Once the buyer has the bottle, they will receive the actual NFTs that are on the bottle as well,” said Shammi Shinh, a self-described champagne connoisseur and NFT trader. “Although they are physically printed on the bottle, they will receive the actual NFT artwork.”
Shinh created the limited edition BAYC champagne bottle in collaboration with Mig, a full-time freelance artist who designs BAYC and the Sneaky Vampire Syndicate NFT collections.
“I knew there was a market for it,” Shinh said, adding that he expected the Buono brothers to hold on to the BAYC champagne bottle and trade it again, based on what the brothers implied.
“To me, I’m thinking people are spending millions of dollars on pictures of apes; why wouldn’t they prefer a high caliber champagne with an ape on the bottle itself?” said Shinh, referring to the BAYC NFT collection.
When asked why he collaborated with Mig for what is touted as the first of more limited edition bottles, Shinh said, “I’m hoping for more awareness—I want people to understand NFTs now.”
As of press time, the floor price of a BAYC NFT is Ξ 99.30, or about $110,540. According to the website NFT Floor Price, the current floor price is over Ξ 50.00 less from BAYC’s all-time high of Ξ 153 or roughly $163,000 (current price at that time), which was set in May.
The BAYC Champagne Bottle and the Buono Brothers
Shinh may be making a point when he surmises that the brothers will trade the bottle again, probably hoping to do so for a higher price.
“I don’t plan to drink it; I think it will be a good investment,” Giovanni, one of the brothers, said. “There is a lot of turmoil in the investment world; things are changing geopolitically very quickly. Wealthy people will look for places to store their wealth for a while—and that could be a champagne with an NFT attached to it.”
As mentioned in the get-go, the BAYC champagne bottle’s $2.5 million price tag has overtaken a previous record. The old record was set by a Macallan 1991 scotch, which sold for $2.33 million at an auction in October 2021. The Macallan bottle was also bundled with a specially-commissioned NFT.
Chateau Avenue Foch is a new champagne brand. It was made with Premier Cru grapes grown at Allouchery-Bailly, a family-owned estate in Chamery in France. The champagne has a blend of Pinot Noir, Meunier, and Chardonnay.
Incidentally, the priciest bottle of wine of any kind at auction was a bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It was purchased in 2018 by a collector at a Sotheby’s sale in New York for $558,000. Only 600 bottles of the 1945 Burgundy vintage, nicknamed “the unicorn vintage,” were produced.
Get more news updates
Get more NFT news updates at Omnimint News. For more information on Omnimint, and details on how to join our community, please follow our Twitter, or subscribe to our Telegram channel for more updates, and please feel free to submit your article.