Are Banksy Prints Still Worth It After the Boom and Bust?

Banksy-love-is-in-the-air-print-auction-e1769206525572.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A black-and-white stencil image of a man in a baseball cap and face covering appears mid-throw on a solid red background, but instead of a weapon, he is hurling a bouquet of flowers." width="970" height="678" data-caption='Banksy, <em>Love is in the Air</em>, 2003. Screenprint in colors on wove paper, unsigned. 19-3/4 x 27-5/8 in. Ed. 149/500, at Heritage Auctions with a high estimate of $35,000. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Image by Heritage Auctions, HA.com</span>'>

Banksy works are as popular as they are because the artist has always understood the machinery of attention better than most of his peers. The record for any Banksy still belongs to Love is in the Bin, which reached £18.58 million, roughly $25.4 million, at Sotheby’s in October 2021 after completing its now-mythologized partial self-destruction, eclipsing the £17 million paid months earlier for Game Changer, his NHS tribute. These moments reinforced the core proposition of the Banksy market: his work arrives preloaded with narrative, controversy and mass recognition, leading to widespread popularity and shielding it from some of the broader art market’s ups and downs.

Prints have benefited disproportionately from that dynamic. What began as affordable multiples, often sold for $100-200 in the early 2000s, gradually became the most accessible point of entry into a market that now regularly posts seven-figure results for wall works, such as Banksquiat: Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, which sold at Phillips in 2023 for $9.9 million. Occupying an accessible middle ground, prints don’t carry the raw scarcity or site-specific mythology of a removed mural that can auction prices into the multi-million-dollar range, but they also don’t come with the liabilities of owning one of the elusive artist’s murals. As the owners of a Lowestoft building learned after Banksy tagged it during A Great British Spraycation, preservation can be an expensive proposition. Faced with £40,000 a year in maintenance costs, they paid £200,000 to have their Banksy removed. Prints, by contrast, offer recognition without structural headaches.

The price history reflects that appeal, albeit unevenly. Between 2011 and 2021, Banksy’s print market swung widely, with limited editions selling anywhere from $4,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. In 2011, the average print price hovered around $12,000. A decade later, it had surged 618 percent (according to a My Art Broker report comparing the artist’s print prices to other assets) following a pandemic-era spike of roughly 270 percent in 2020, peaking near $89,000. Iconic images and early editions pulled the averages upward, according to the Banksy Print Value website.

That irrational exuberance did not last. Prices fell sharply after the pandemic surge, with some prints correcting by as much as 83 percent by mid-2025. The downturn hit hardest in 2020, but over the past five years, Banksy prints have performed better than much of the art market, stabilizing rather than collapsing. Today, signed, authenticated prints generally trade between $27,000 and $68,000, with unsigned examples closer to $14,000 to $20,000, though his most recognizable works tend to fetch a lot more. A signed Girl with Balloon (edition 78/150), for instance, sold at Christie’s last year for $257,909, underscoring how familiarity continues to drive premiums.

For collectors priced out during the frenzy, the reset quietly reopened the door. Heritage Auctions’ upcoming In Focus: Banksy sale has, for instance, an unsigned Girl with Balloon (edition 344/600, authenticated by Pest Control) with an estimate of $60,000-80,000. Live bidding opens January 29 on a group of just 13 lots, all accompanied by certificates of authenticity. The consignors remain undisclosed, but the selection is a deliberate hit parade, with Love is in the Air from 2003 (estimate: $25,000-35,000) alongside staples like Flying Copper (estimate: $10,000-15,000), Pulp Fiction (estimate: $25,000-35,000) and No Ball Games (estimate: $30,000-50,000). None of them will rewrite the record books, but given that Banksy’s last major, widely publicized official print release was in 2019 and the overall print supply is low compared to that of other blue-chip artists, they’re still a good buy for both seasoned collectors and first-time buyers.

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