Art News: Banksy's Keep Ou T Is for Sale. What About Your Print?

Banksy's Keep Ou T goes to auction in London on 15 October, during Frieze week, with an estimate of £1.2 million to £1.8 million. It is a gate from the EU arrivals hall at Heathrow, with KEEP OU painted across its shutter and one of his rats holding the missing T, and it was first shown at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 2019.

Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy, where Keep Ou T was first shown in 2019. Photo: Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A headline lot is not a comparable

Keep Ou T is a single installation. A limited edition print is one of several hundred sheets pulled from the same screens, most of them published through Pictures on Walls in the 2000s and usually issued in two editions: a signed run, typically of 150, and a larger unsigned one. Buyers of prints do not price them off a sculpture, a painting or a shredded canvas. They price them off what the same image, in the same edition and in similar condition, has fetched recently.

That is why two owners of the same picture can be looking at very different figures, and why an estimate that is not built from comparable results is worth very little. Our Banksy price guide sets out what prints have sold for and where each figure comes from.

Banksy, Girl with Balloon, 2004, screenprint. Published in a signed and an unsigned edition, with colourways and proofs that are valued separately.

Four things that decide what your print is worth

The edition. Signed or unsigned comes first, and the gap between the two is wide. Artist's proofs and rare colourways sit outside the main run and are priced on their own terms. The pencil line in the bottom margin tells you which you have.

The certificate. Pest Control has been the only body that authenticates Banksy's work since 2008, and reputable buyers, dealers and salerooms will not go ahead without its certificate. If you have one, keep it with the print. If you do not, the application comes before anything else and can take months.

Condition. Prints from this period were often framed before conservation framing was usual. Light-fading, toning from an acidic mount, tape stains in the margins and trimming to fit a frame all reduce value, and trimming is permanent. A print that has never been out of its frame is the one most worth looking at closely.

The image. Some images have a very wide pool of buyers; others are loved by fewer people, or are subjects some buyers will not hang. That affects not just the price but the best way to sell. Our guide to each Banksy print covers the editions one by one.

Banksy, Love Is In The Air, 2003, screenprint. Its large flat areas show light-fading more plainly than busier images.

What to send us

A photograph and a few details are enough to begin. If you can, send:

• the whole sheet, including all four margins, rather than a crop of the image
• the pencil signature and edition number, close enough to read
• the reverse of the print
• the Pest Control certificate, front and back
• any receipt or paperwork from Pictures on Walls

If the print is framed and you cannot safely take it out, photograph it as it is and mention that it is framed. Whether it needs to come out of the frame can be decided later.

What happens next

Our valuations are written: a realistic range and the comparable results it is built from, so you can see the reasoning rather than take a figure on trust. If you then want to sell, we set out the three routes, outright purchase, auction and private sale, and what each would cost you. Selling a Banksy compares them in full, and auction fees explained shows every charge that comes off a hammer price.

We act for the seller, not the saleroom. Our fee is typically nothing, we negotiate the seller's commission and unsold fees rather than accept a published rate card, and every offer is passed on to you in full. Some owners simply want to know what they have, and that is fine too.

If you own a Banksy print and are wondering what it is worth, send us photographs for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: a recreation of Girl with Balloon at The World of Banksy, an exhibition of reconstructed murals, Brussels, 2022. Photo: Miguel Discart, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.