5-year-old puts artwork online at ridiculous prices but still sells some! 【Photos, video】

How about a fine paper Stegosaurus? That’ll be 90,000 yen (US$818) please… and that’s not even the most expensive piece.

It seems that artists and entrepreneurs are getting younger every day, as a five-year-old Japanese boy has started selling his origami, hand-crafted models, and crayon-drawn sketches on his online shop.

While he had some help setting up the website, he had full control of pricing the works of art and came up with some hilarious numbers, ranging from a reasonable 50 yen (US$0.45) to a rather ambitious 900,000,000,100 yen (US$8.17 billion).

Here is the young man himself, adorably choosing the prices, artwork names, and descriptions.

Alongside the artwork itself, each piece has an “Add to Cart” button with the price information. It turns out that some of the prices aren’t accepted (many are the Japanese equivalents of “a bazillion”), so the button is instead greyed-out and reads “The price is weird, so you can’t buy it.”

▼ For another example, the “Attacking gross stomach octopus” costs “attacking-
gross-stomach-octopus yen”. We’re, uh, not sure how to convert that to dollars.

But a considerable number of his works are available to purchase at comprehensible prices. With such entrepreneurial sense, and an impressive knowledge of lesser-known dinosaurs, it’s no surprise that the some online shoppers and art lovers (and possibly a family member or two) have been quick to grab some of these limited-time offers.

▼ The cheapest pieces, the shuriken (throwing stars),
have unfortunately already sold out at 50 yen.

▼ But the most expensive, the Liliensternus dinosaur, is still available at a price that
could bankrupt some countries at the aforementioned 900 billion and 100 yen.

All of the pieces were made by the boy wonder himself when he was between the ages of 4 and 5. Like the pricing, each one is unique, often extending beyond dinosaurs and ninjas.

Take for example this realistic replica of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa.

▼ It can be yours for the low price of 800,000,000 yen (US$7,266,400).
It’s… probably cheaper than buying the real thing?

Clearly a Renaissance boy, the artist, whose name is not published on his gallery site, has mastered several art forms such as origami, sculpture, and still-life drawing. We think that some of his work is just as impactful as what you might see on display in traditional brick and mortar galleries.

▼ Just take a look at Attack of 11 Cats. An absolute steal at only
eleventy-thousand yen (approximately ten-teen U.S. dollars).

▼ Mystery Thing. Perhaps you can solve it for a mere 100,000 yen.

▼ Unfortunately, my personal favourite has already sold.
The Allosaurus went for only 152 yen.

While most of the items that have sold have been on the cheaper side, some have cost thousands of yen (the most expensive item to have sold to date was 8,000 yen). If you want to check them out for yourself, then be sure to visit the artist’s website.

We hope that the boy manages to sell them all so that he can continue on to bigger and better things, presumably in the rocket ship or on the dinosaur island he buys with the proceeds from his first batch. Or perhaps he could take a leaf out of another young artist’s book and exchange “making money with art” for “making art with money”.

Source, images: Five Blue Puddle

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