In April 2021, you could mint a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for 0.08 ETH — about $190. A year later, the cheapest ape in the collection cost more than a house. This is the story of how cartoon primates became the ultimate status symbol — and what happened to the celebrities who bought in at the very top.
The $452,000 ape
On 30 December 2021, Eminem — yes, that Eminem — bought Bored Ape #9055 for 123.45 ETH, worth roughly $452,000 at the time. Fans instantly dubbed it "EminApe" because the hoodie-wearing, scowling ape looked uncannily like him. He set it as his Twitter profile picture and later worked it into the video for From the D 2 the LBC with Snoop Dogg.
He was far from alone.
When the A-list aped in
The back half of 2021 was a full-blown celebrity stampede:
- Jay-Z made a CryptoPunk (#6095) his profile photo — picked up for around $126,000.
- Stephen Curry grabbed Bored Ape #7990 for 55 ETH (~$180,000).
- Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and Serena Williams all joined the club — Fallon and Hilton famously showing theirs off on The Tonight Show.
- By early 2022, Justin Bieber paid a now-infamous 500 ETH (~$1.3M) for an ape worth a fraction of that.
At the peak in spring 2022, the floor price — the cheapest ape money could buy — hit around 150 ETH, north of $400,000. Owning one wasn't an investment. It was a backstage pass.
"…and what's it worth now?"
Here's the part the hype cycle left out.
After the 2022 crash, NFT trading volume fell off a cliff. By 2024–2025 the Bored Ape floor had collapsed into the low-double-digit ETH range — tens of thousands of dollars, not the half-million it once commanded. A blue-chip JPEG that once cost the price of a Lamborghini now trades closer to the price of its wheels.
Eminem, to his credit, never flipped his. He's talked about it as a collector and a fan, not a trade — which, as it turns out, was the only way to come out of this one still smiling.
The lesson behind the laugh
The Ape mania is a near-perfect case study in three things every trader eventually learns the hard way:
- Status is not value. When the reason to buy is "everyone famous owns one," you're buying the top.
- Liquidity is a privilege, not a promise. It's only worth $400k if someone will actually pay $400k. In a bear market, the bids simply vanish.
- Time-in beats timing — but only if the asset survives. Eminem held, and the floor still fell. Conviction doesn't fix fundamentals.
NFTs aren't dead — real art, gaming and identity use-cases are still being built. But the 2021 celebrity gold rush is a permanent reminder that the most expensive words in markets are "this time it's different."
Posted for entertainment and education — not financial advice. Figures are approximate, and NFT valuations are famously volatile.