NYC fruit seller cries after hearing banana he sold for 25 cents was auctioned off for $6.2 million: ‘I am a poor man’
“I am a poor man. I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”
NYC fruit seller cries after hearing banana he sold for 25 cents was auctioned off for $6.2 million: ‘I am a poor man’
An ordinary banana duct taped to a wall recently sold at auction for $6.2 million in New York. The Upper East Side fruit stand located outside the Sotheby’s auction house where the display was auctioned off sold the banana that would later be hanging off the wall for just 25 cents.
Shah Alam, the 74-year-old man who was working at the fruit stand that day, told the New York Times that when he found out how much the piece had sold for, he began to cry. “I am a poor man. I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”
Karina Sokolovsky, a spokeswoman for Sotheby’s, confirmed that the banana that hung on the wall at the auction was in fact purchased from the stand Alam works at on the day of the sale. The display was purchased by Justin Sun, a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
Alam, a widower from Bangladesh, was a civil servant before moving to the US in 2007 to be closer to one of his children on Long Island. He told the outlet that he lives in a Bronx basement apartment with five other men and pays just $500 per month, and works at the fruit stand four days per week for 12 hours a day, and is paid just $12 per hour.
Following the report, Sun wrote, “To thank Mr. Shah Alam, I’ve decided to buy 100,000 bananas from his stand in New York’s Upper East Side. These bananas will be distributed free worldwide through his stand. Show a valid ID to claim one banana, while supplies last.”