Aloha gang, it's Jacy!
It dawned on me recently that my social feeds have been completely devoid of any interesting fodder - appreciation, speculation or otherwise - about digital art.
Yap this, Memes that. Tariffs and interest rates. Where is the JPEG love?!
So it feels like a great time to drop a follow-up piece to my previous art appreciation post, An Ode to glitch Marfa.
Today, I'm bringing you a closer look at what I consider Beeple's most obscure and enigmatic collection, the Everyday Artifacts.
Everyday Artifacts aren’t to be confused with his Everydays, which are individual works of art he’s posted every single day for the past ~ checks notes ~ 17+ years now.
Everydays are the work most Beeple admirers are familiar with. He posts them daily on X as graphic social commentary on the state of the market and world at large.
Very few Everydays, however, are ultimately minted as NFTs.
How and why he decides to mint an Everyday is still largely a mystery. After launching an initial collection in 2020, primarily as editions of /100, he’s since slowed down significantly and become a lot more selective with releases.
In a recent call with collectors, Beeple implied he’s more interested in getting art into the hands of the right collectors rather than the highest bidders.
Digital Scarcity. Although his art is plentiful, he’s creating an air of exclusivity around actually collecting it.
Which brings us back to the Everyday Artifacts.
Artifacts are 1/1 work-in-progress pieces derived from the Everydays created live in person at Beeple’s studio in Charleston, NC.
The first Artifacts were born on March 11, 2023 amidst the chaos and mayhem of the grand opening of the gallery.
I was lucky enough to get to go, and I will tell you - it was everything you’d expect out of a Beeple shindig.
The scene was electric. Wall-to-wall install of the First 5000 Everydays. Eerily life-like dopplegangers of Elon, Zuck, and Kim Jong Un posing for selfies. World class sound system and floor-to-ceiling LCD panels that transformed viewing art into experiencing it. Snowfro printing Chromie Squiggles out of his backpack. Pure electric.
Then, the main event. Beeple held court in the center of the room and began creating an Everyday live. And you just knew you were witnessing something profoundly special.
Then suddenly, an airdrop.
Literally.
There were printers in the ceiling throughout the venue and Beeple was hitting ‘print’ at various moments throughout the performance, physically airdropping real-time WIP prints to attendees.
It didn’t take long for folks to realize the prints were numbered and that some of them were paired to matching NFTs.
Absolute chaos ensued. People were clawing and climbing for prints; there were mini mosh pits everywhere. I lost my phone, an earring, and a heel. But hey ...
In total, 50 Everyday Artifacts were minted that night, although not all of them were claimed.
A month later, at the first gallery community event, Beeple dropped another 50 Artifacts, bringing the collection size to 100.
Since then, however, Beeple hasn’t minted anymore Artifacts.
And when asked about it, he said his preference is for scarcity and he’ll probably move more toward physical prints and goods for gallery events.
We saw this play out at future events, like the 2023 Crypto Winter Wonderland Party, where he seemingly created a 3rd set of Artifacts, but never distributed them. Instead, guests were treated to hand-signed prints and Beeple’s skid-stained undies.
And thus the Everyday Artifacts collection remains at 100 NFTs on Ethereum mainnet.
Beeple and his team have never really promoted or even publicly talked about the collection much, so unless you were there or are tuned in, you may not even realize it exists.
They’ve largely flown under the radar, and the price action reflects it.
Outside of a few early sales ranging from 6.25 - 13 ETH, the majority of Artifacts have sold in the 2 - 4ish range.
The floor is still … just ~3E for a 1/1 Beeple original.
Here’s where it gets interesting though. While the quantity of Artifacts trading hands is relatively low, the quality of the collectors is S-tier.
Esteemed holders include several artists and collectors who are total chads in their own right, including:
~ ripcache ~ deekay motion ~ artifaction ~ grant yun ~ coldie ~ raoul pal ~
These are the ones I could find via ENS. I’m guessing there are more legends behind some of the undoxxed holder wallets too.
Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time before more art appreciat00rs start to find this little treasure hiding in plain site.
It may be this cycle, it may be decades from now. But it’s hard to see a small, obscure collection of Beeple 1/1s not holding value in the long run.
Last thing I’ll say is that if I’ve piqued your interest and you’re thinking about browsing, I put a premium on the Grand Opening 50 … and not just because I own one 😉
For starters, they’re the original Artifacts, minted and dropped at the Grand Opening of the gallery. Or as they like to say in the comments, “First.”
And perhaps more importantly, provenance.
As Ripcache so eloquently points out, only the Grand Opening 50 were minted directly from Beeple’s wallet, whereas the subsequent Community Event 50 were minted from the EveryDays-Artifacts wallet.
That said, anything from this collection is completely vaultable.
And if you’re one of the lucky ones to have done well this cycle and are at the ‘rotate profits into JPEGs’ part of your journey, you could do a lot worse than picking up a Beeple 1/1 for < 3 ETH.
**ofc nfa dyor lmnop
