Buying property in any metropolitan city comes with a steep price tag, but how about one with an original Banksy mural? A Bristol building is about to hit the auction block bearing one of the elusive street artist’s early imprints of a bear throwing a molotov cocktail at the police. Entitled Mild Mild West, Banksy was inspired to paint the mural back in 1999, after a warehouse party was raided by the cops.
The building was vacant when first bought in 2000 for a modest $71,000 USD. Today, it houses four bedrooms and a barber shop on the ground floor, which is expected to garner roughly a million dollars when it hits the market with the following blurb: “Bristol’s home-grown and anonymous graffiti artist Banksy is known all across the world for his satirical, anti-establishment, and thought-provoking street art. Interested parties to make their own investigations.”
Most would reel at the opportunity to own either a Banksy or an edifice bearing his mark, with prints and editions usually fetching $50 to $500,000 USD, while original works well exceed the millions. There are examples, however, where the public attention became too frenzied that an owner of a building in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood had Banksy’s Happy Choppers mural painted over, because fans kept crowding around each night, activating a security light. He sold the building the next year.
The new owner was flipping through the book Banksy Captured, when a building just like his own was shown with the bear mural. He went outside only to see a black wall, prompting him to uncover what may lie beneath it. After a lengthy restoration process, Happy Choppers resurfaced and divided into eight pieces, which sold for $2.7m USD at Sotheby’s auction in 2023.
