On June 10, a four-foot-tall mint-green Labubu sold for $170,000 at the world’s first Labubu auction. If that sentence sounds like gibberish to you, let’s catch you up: Labubus — a.k.a. tiny bunny-shaped elves — are $30 collectible toys made by Pop Mart that have become increasingly inescapable. They’ve been seen hanging from Rihanna’s Louis Vuitton bag and NBA player Dillon Brooks’s belt loop. They’re on Lisa from Blackpink’s Instagram and protesting ICE in downtown Los Angeles and dressed in Gucci outfits. They’re so in demand, even fakes (“Lafufus”) are infiltrating the market. It’s baffling, sure, but it seems the trinket girlies are onto something.
Held at the Yongle auction house in Beijing, China, the Labubu auction sold all 48 lots for a total of 3.73 million yuan, or about $520,000, according to NBC. The highest price tag belonged to the mint-green monstrosity mentioned above, while the second-most-expensive Labubu was a five-foot-tall (!) brown plastic elf that went for over $130,000. The third-priciest lot was a set of three Labubus called the Three Wise Labubu, with one doll crossing its arms, another making a peekaboo gesture, and the third covering its mouth. It sold for more than $80,000. I hope whoever is buying these has a good place to put them.
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
Are they creepy? Are they cute? Are they worth $170,000? I’ll leave that up to you.
