Labubu figurines set records at auction as Hong Kong-designed soft toys’ popularity grows
48 lots fetched more than US$500,000, with one selling for US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing, reflecting the soft toys’ rising cachet

A Labubu figurine sold for over a million yuan at an auction in Beijing this week, as demand for rare and limited editions of the soft toy rises.
The Yongle Auction sale featured 48 lots and recorded proceeds of 3,725,425 yuan (US$518,000). The auction drew a packed crowd at Beijing’s Phoenix Art Centre and was streamed online to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Its hashtag quickly trended on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, garnering over 45 million views.
Labubu is closer to art than it is to merchandise
Zhao Xu, founder of Yongle Auction, said the sale attracted more than 1,000 bidders, and roughly 25 per cent of them were from outside mainland China, mainly from Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia.