A handwritten Tupac Shakur letter just fetched more than $172,000 in an online auction. Who bought it?
Complex is reporting that a letter titled “Is Thug Life Dead?” written by Shakur just sold for the price of a small mansion. The letter originally hit the Goldin Auctions block for around $11,000 earlier this month after failing to get the asking price of $225,000 in a previous auction. But now, the letter blew past the opening bid and went for $172,725.
Goldin Auctions says that things got the most intense in the last 48 hours of bidding. They confirm that the letter now belongs to a prominent figure in the collecting world and that they outbid a popular entertainment figure who wished to remain anonymous.
So now, a complete stranger to the Hip-Hop community now owns an important piece of it. Are you cool with that?
Granted, legal wranglings over Tupac’s material between Suge Knight and Tupac’s late mother Afeni could get complex, but at least we knew who were pulling the strings. With Suge in jail and Afeni gone, there’s no telling where much of Tupac music and memorabilia could end up in the future.
Who bought the letter and what they intend to do with it very important and speaks volumes to how key it is that Hip-Hop starts owning just as much as it creates. For all we know this letter could be owned by someone like million-dollar Wu-Tang Clan album owner Martin Shkreli, a complete stranger to the culture.
Tupac has been dead for 20 years but his name is making more money that when he was alive. The phenomenon isn’t new. Artists who died young have been getting money for quite some time, look at Vincent van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Let’s hope that Tupac’s contributions are handled with the same kind of care and respect as theirs.
Photo: WENN.com
