Labubu figurines set records at auction as Hong Kong-designed soft toys' popularity grows
A Labubu figurine sold for over a million yuan (US$139,100) at an auction in Beijing this week, as demand for rare and limited editions of the soft toy rises.
Created by Hong Kong-born Lung Ka-sing and produced as collectible toys by mainland Chinese company Pop Mart,
Labubu figurines are usually priced between US$30 and US$300.
The Yongle Auction sale featured 48 lots and recorded proceeds of 3,725,425 yuan. The auction drew a packed crowd at Beijing's Phoenix Art Centre and was streamed online to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Its hashtag quickly trended on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, garnering over 45 million views.
Labubu is closer to art than it is to merchandise
Zhao Xu, founder of Yongle Auction
Zhao Xu, founder of Yongle Auction, said the sale attracted more than 1,000 bidders, and roughly 25 per cent of them were from outside mainland China, mainly from Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia.
Most of the toys sold for figures in the low tens of thousands of yuan during the hours-long auction. The first major buzz came when a 160cm (63-inch) tall brown Labubu figurine – number 7 of an edition of 15 – hit the stage. Bidding rose rapidly from a few tens of thousands to over half a million yuan, before the piece sold for 820,000 yuan.
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