Fruit Vendor’s 25-Cent Banana Sold for $6M. Now the Man Who Bought It Wants 100,000 More.

Imagine working 12-hour shifts for $12 per hour and witnessing one of your 25-cent products being resold for $6.2 million. 

Such an occurrence sounds like a fever dream, but it was the odd reality for 74-year-old fruit vendor Shah Alam who works a sidewalk stand outside of Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side.

When Alam, a widower from Bangladesh, started working as a fruit vendor, he never considered one of his bananas would be taped to a wall and auctioned off as some sort of absurdist art. He definitely didn’t think it would be worth $6.2 million—won for $5.2 million plus $1.5 million in auction-house fees, per the New York Times.

However, this was exactly the case.

“I am a poor man,” Alam told the Times in an emotional statement. “I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”

According to the Times, Alam lives in a basement with five other men in the Bronx, paying $500 in monthly rent. When told about the banana artwork, titled “Comedian,” Alam did not understand or appreciate the concept.

“Those who bought it, what kind of people are they?” he asked the Times reporter. “Do they not know what a banana is?”

But now, as a sort of “thank you” for Alam’s contribution to the artwork, Justin Sun, the founder of a cryptocurrency platform and the new owner of “Comedian,” has offered to purchase 100,000 bananas from the vendor’s stand.

“As the owner of a fruit stand in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mr. Shah Alam inadvertently became a crucial contributor to a groundbreaking piece of art,” Sun posted on X. “This banana, far from being an ordinary piece of fruit, has taken on profound cultural and artistic significance.”

“Mr. Alam’s contribution to this extraordinary artwork is indispensable, highlighting the boundless possibilities and value hidden in everyday life,” he continued. “I hope this initiative will bring his story to a broader audience and, one day, I look forward to visiting his fruit stand in person to express my gratitude again.”