A t-shirt signed by Banksy and given to one of the Colston 4 has sold at auction for £12,000.
The shirt was one of four special ones given to the four defendants who were cleared of criminal damage for their part in toppling the statue of the Bristol slave trader in June 2020. Elusive street artist Banksy made a couple of thousand t-shirts and sold them at four independent stores in Bristol last December to raise money for the Colston 4 just before their trial.
And after they were found not guilty, Banksy gave each defendant a different version of the t-shirt, with the colours of the image reversed, and signed them. One of the Colston 4 - the auctioneer won’t say which one - put the t-shirt up for sale at the East Bristol Auction House in Hanham.
Read more: The curious tale of Banksy, the Mayor of Bristol, the Colston 4 and a signed t-shirt
It has now sold for a top bid of £10,000 with the buyer’s premium upping that to £12,000. The regular Colston 4 Banksy t-shirts, which show the empty plinth of the Colston statue, a rope and a placard, were on sale for £25, and were snapped up by queues of people in one morning last December.
Those t-shirts soon appeared on eBay with an asking price of up to £1,000, but now are generally selling for much less than that. The special t-shirts Banksy gave to the Colston 4, and signed, are each worth at least ten times more than that.
“This isn’t just a shirt, this is a piece of history,” said East Bristol Auctions’ Jay Goodman-Browne. “The toppling of the Edward Colston statue is regarded by some as one of the defining events of the last decade and this shirt - one of only four made - encapsulates that event,” he added.
Banksy said at the time that the proceeds from the t-shirts were to go to the defendants ‘so they can go for a pint’. The day the t-shirts went on sale, December 11, was just before the trial that would eventually see Rhian Graham, Jake Skuse, Milo Ponsford and Sage Willoughby cleared of criminal damage.
There is another Banksy Colston 4 t-shirt that could also be worth many times more than the limited edition ones sold at stores across Bristol last year. On the night in January that a representative of Banksy handed their special t-shirts to the Colston 4, she also gave them some of the regular t-shirts too.
And there is speculation she engineered a meeting at the same time between the four and Bristol mayor Marvin Rees. He signed one of those other t-shirts, adding his signature to the four defendants'.
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