Azuki NFT #9605 Bought for a Massive $1.4 Million

• The second-rarest NFT from the popular manga-style collection Azuki has sold for a massive $1.4 million on leading marketplace OpenSea

• It’s the highest secondary sale in Azuki’s history

According to a tweet on Wednesday, Azuki #9605 sold on the Ethereum-powered secondary marketplace OpenSea for 420.7 Ether. At current market prices, the manga-style NFT piece is valued at approximately $1,414,506.

Data from OpenSea shows that #9605 is now owned by a collector identified as ‘jdizzles2’. The buyer goes by Jason/@BitCoin4Freedom on Twitter, according to ‘treboomin’ a member of the RedBeanDAO who previously own the NFT.

RedBeanDAO first purchased #9605 on the secondary market for 120 ETH. The organization claimed that the project’s team provided a different offering with their attention to detail and custom code.

Prior to launch, the team also spent time improving ERC-721 — the specification used for the majority of NFTs today on the Ethereum blockchain. They took the source code apart, found the inefficiencies, improved it, and shared it with the world.

From RedBeanDAO’s thread of what Azuki did differently

Azuki’s Rise to the Top

As of the time of writing this report, the sale holds the record as the most expensive NFT from the 10,000 strong Azuki collection. The project launched by Chiru labs back in January 2022 is supposedly inspired by the popular Japanese anime and manga art style.

Despite the hefty 1 ETH mint price, the collection sold out in three minutes and raised over $29 million from its launch day. Less than a month later, Azuki solidified its place as the eight-most traded NFT of all time after boasting transaction volumes of almost $300 million.

After setting the NFT space alight with excitement, the collection became a so-called competitor to popular collections like Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), Cool Cats, and Crypto Punks, per social media comments.