Believe It or Not! Ripley’s Ponies Up $12 Million for Maurizio Cattelan’s Gold Toilet
51Nov. 21, 2025
Entertainment company Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, known for its oddity-themed attractions, on November 19 was revealed to be the lone bidder for and the buyer of Italian conceptual artistMaurizio Cattelan’s 2016 workAmerica, a life-size working toilet made of solid 18-karat gold. The sale took place on the evening of November 18 in New York as part ofSotheby’sThe Now & Contemporary auction. Bidding for the work began and ended at $10 million, pegged, per the auction house, to the current price of the 2,440 ounces of gold used to make the sculpture; $2.1 million in fees brought the grand total to $12.1 million.
Ripley’s waited a day to reveal itself as the buyer, which it did in agleeful Instagram postmade onWorld Toilet Day, officially inaugurated by the United Nations in 2012 to bring attention to the global need for safe sanitation. “We’re flush with excitement!” wrote the brand of its purchase, noting that it was looking into allowing visitors to use the functional commode but that doing so would involve “serious planning and someone brave enough to ensure everything keeps flowing in the right direction.”
The lustrous throne was sold by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who bought it from Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. It is the only remaining example of the work, of which two versions have been fabricated to date. The other, originally installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, was famously stolen from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, in 2019. It is presumed to have been melted down and sold.
Cattelan made headlines last year at Sotheby’s November contemporary art sale, when his 2019 Comedian, a banana duct-taped to a wall, hammered for $6.2 million—considerably more than the cost of its materials—after fierce bidding.