Gary Vaynerchuk's digital scans of his "VeeFriends" hand-drawn doodles have generated more than $90 million in sales to date. But yesterday the workaholic investor, serial entrepreneur, and yard sale collector proved that paper drawings are also still valuable in the digital age—he just sold five of them for $1.26 million, outselling Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock at a Christie's auction in New York.
The lot of five hand-drawn VeeFriends pictures sold for more than six figures each.
Up for sale were the “ink on paper” versions of Empathetic Elephant, Gratitude Gorilla, "Diamond Hands" Hen, "You're Gonna Die" Fly, and Tremendous Tiger. The Emphatic Elephant won the day, selling for $412,500. The doodle took Vaynerchuk just minutes to draw.
90 minutes until the auction starts https://t.co/MKNsrcqqHw pic.twitter.com/KQFM0tWdip
— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) October 1, 2021
The five doodles are part of the 286-piece collection of animals hand-drawn by Vaynerchuk himself. Vaynerchuk turned the doodles into a collection of 10,255 NFTs called VeeFriends. Each animal carries an epithet: noble camels, glowing glow worms, benevolent barn owls, and so on.
The VeeFriends website says that the animals “represent human traits that Gary most admires. He focused on traits that he believes will lead to happiness and success.”
Aside from his success with an online wine business and his tech investments, Vaynerchuk is best known for his motivational advice.
Someone’s accomplishments aren’t at the demise of another’s .. the world is abundant.. perspectives need a tweak on the culture of “or” and “versus” ..
— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) October 1, 2021
The doodles may look infantile, but the VeeFriends floor price is now 14.65 ETH, or about $50,100, and the most valuable VeeFriends NFT sold for almost $1.2 million on OpenSea. It depicts an “Alert Ape,” and looks exactly how it sounds.
#0xa32 bought Alert Ape - VeeFriends by veefriends for $61.2K (~20.0 ETH)https://t.co/pqpaAYY1Zu pic.twitter.com/gEzU6kXWfE
— NFT Sniper (@nft_bot_sniper) September 26, 2021
Each NFT is accompanied by a 20-30 second video of Vaynerchuk thrashing out the doodle, and the NFTs doubles as a ticket to Vaynerchuk’s upcoming conferences for the next three years.
Wait to they find out it’s way bigger than the art and collectibles … the technology and behavior that nfts will create Ans what can and will be built is mind blowing
— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) October 1, 2021
On September 10, Vaynerchuk announced VeeCon 2022, the first of three planned annual events that will take place from May 19 through to May 22 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On Thursday, social media giant TikTok announced it would release a collection of NFTs featuring Vaynerchuk on October 6. The collection, which will be hosted on Ethereum scaling solution Immutable X, will also feature recording artist Lil Nas X, Grimes, and social media personality Bella Poarch.
