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Cheung Hok-hang

A Labubu figurine sold for over a million yuan at an auction in Beijing this week, as demand for rare and limited editions of the soft toy rises.
Created by Hong Kong-born Lung Ka-sing and produced as collectible toys by mainland Chinese company Pop Mart, Labubu figurines are usually priced between US$30 and US$300.
The Yongle Auction sale featured 48 lots and recorded proceeds of 3,725,425 yuan (US$518,000). The auction drew a packed crowd at Beijing’s Phoenix Art Centre and was streamed online to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Its hashtag quickly trended on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, garnering over 45 million views.
Labubu is closer to art than it is to merchandise
Zhao Xu, founder of Yongle Auction
Zhao Xu, founder of Yongle Auction, said the sale attracted more than 1,000 bidders, and roughly 25 per cent of them were from outside mainland China, mainly from Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia.
Most of the toys sold for figures in the low tens of thousands of yuan during the hours-long auction. The first major buzz came when a 160cm (63-inch) tall brown Labubu figurine – number 7 of an edition of 15 – hit the stage. Bidding rose rapidly from a few tens of thousands to over half a million yuan, before the piece sold for 820,000 yuan.

The auctioneer declared it a new world record for a Labubu toy, and it was immediately surpassed by the next lot: a single-edition, 131cm-high PVC figure with signature rabbit ears and sharp teeth, covered in what was described as mint-coloured hair.
After heavy bidding, it was sold to an online buyer for 1.08 million yuan (1.24 million yuan including commission), making it the most valuable Labubu ever sold.
Another stand-out was a set of three wooden Labubu figures from the Three Wise Labubu series. The set – from a limited edition of 120 – sold for 510,000 yuan. It had previously appeared in Sotheby’s Hong Kong’s online auction in May, where it sold for HK$203,200, exceeding its low estimate by 300 per cent. Notably, the same set failed to sell at Sotheby’s Hong Kong two years ago in 2023.
With this auction, Labubu has cemented its place as one of the fastest rising stars in the collectible toy market. In 2019, Lung signed a deal with Pop Mart to sell his figurines, and less than six years later, a Labubu has sold for more than a million yuan.
By comparison, Bearbrick, Medicom Toy’s anthropomorphic bear, introduced in 2001 as a giveaway at Tokyo’s World Character Convention, took nearly two decades to hit its highest price of US$30,000 at a Christie’s auction in November 2019. This was for a collaboration with fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.

The rise of Labubu has prompted some users on Chinese social media platform RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, to dig out their old Bearbrick collections, which they bought at peak prices only to find that the once-hyped toys have lost value. .
Zhao believes Labubu will have greater staying power than Bearbrick.
“Bearbrick is a merchandise line designed by a company, whereas Labubu is the creation of an individual artist who produces original artwork,” he said. “The artist’s paintings also appear at auction from time to time – so Labubu is closer to art than it is to merchandise.”
Jiang Shuyang, a Shanghai-based collector and founder of the T & Artcon collectible toy art fair, compares Labubu to other figures he has collected in the past, such as those by Javier Calleja and Edgar Plans, which often come with high price tags that can deter new collectors.
“Labubu not only has a much larger fan base in China and overseas, but its more accessible original price also makes it easier for newcomers to start collecting,” Jiang said. Despite being a major player in the collectible toy market, Jiang is staying cautious. “I’ll only buy what I truly love now; not for investment. The hype is too intense, and eventually, it will burst,” he says.


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48 lots fetched more than US$500,000, with one selling for US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing, reflecting the soft toys’ rising cachet


48 lots fetched more than US$500,000, with one selling for US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing, reflecting the soft toys’ rising cachet.


Auctions

Labubu

Labubu figurines set records at auction as Hong Kong-designed soft toys’ popularity grows

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}48 lots fetched more than US$500,000, with one selling for US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing, reflecting the soft toys’ rising cachet

48 lots fetched more than US$500,000, with one selling for US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing, reflecting the soft toys’ rising cachet