Just went down this rabbit hole about the most expensive NFT sales ever and honestly? Some of these numbers are absolutely wild. Like, Pak's The Merge hitting $91.8 million back in 2021 still blows my mind—and get this, it wasn't even owned by one person. 28,893 collectors basically pooled together to buy pieces of it. That's such a different model from what I expected.

Beeple's been absolutely dominating too. His Everydays piece went for $69 million at Christie's, which started at just $100 in bidding. Then there's this Clock NFT he made with Julian Assange that sold for $52.7 million—it literally counts the days of Assange's imprisonment and updates daily. Pretty heavy stuff when you think about it.

The most expensive NFT conversation keeps coming back to CryptoPunks though. These things are everywhere on the expensive list. CryptoPunk #5822 (the blue alien one) sold for $23 million, and there are like nine different versions of these alien punks that have sold for millions each. #7523 with the medical mask went for $11.75 million. It's insane how valuable these early NFTs became.

What's interesting is that most expensive NFT collections tend to be either super early projects like CryptoPunks from 2017, or pieces by artists who already had serious clout like Beeple. The market seems to really value scarcity plus artist reputation. TPunk #3442 (the Joker one) jumped to $10.5 million just because Justin Sun bought it—suddenly everyone wanted in.

Honestly, the most expensive NFT market feels like it's stabilized a bit compared to 2021-2022 hype, but these blue-chip collections still hold crazy value. Whether that stays true long-term though? That's the real question.