The auction of Yuga Labs' 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) drove has smashed through expectations with a winning bid of $24.39 million.

The sale closed on Friday and was hosted by the prestigious auction house Sotheby's, which had estimated earlier that the collection would fetch between $12 million and $eighteen million.

The parcel of nonfungibles consists of 101 Bored Apes and 3 M1 and three M2 "mutant serum" NFTs. When a Bored Ape token is combined with an M1 or M2 serum, it enables the holder to mint a new Mutant Ape NFT that keeps the same traits of the original Bored Ape but is depicted in a mutant format.

Taking the serum NFTs out of the equation every bit they are unremarkably airdropped to holders for free, each Bored Ape in the collection was valued at an average price of roughly $241,000 or 69.4 Ether (ETH) at the time of publication.

The figure tallies in well above the floor price for Bored Ape NFTs on the secondary market, with data from OpenSea showing a minimum price of 38.99 ETH, worth around $135,000.

Yuga Labs also auctioned off a 101 NFT drove of its side project Bored Ape Kennel Gild that airtight on the same mean solar day with a winning bid of $1.83 million, at a toll of $18,150 per NFT. The figure fell within Sotheby's estimate of $i.v million to $ii million, and trounce the flooring price on OpenSea of 3.09 ETH or $10.700.

Delaware-based Yuga Labs launched the BAYC on Apr 30, and it has since become a highly popular and sought-subsequently project. Figures such every bit NBA star Steph Curry aped in by paying 55 ETH ($191,000) for a Bored Ape NFT tardily last calendar month. Metaverse gaming business firm The Sandbox too snapped upwards a Bored Ape for a record price of 740 ETH ($2.57 meg) on Sept. 6.

Sandbox's NFT depicts a golden ape with laser optics wearing a sea helm's hat. In a blog post on Wednesday, the firm revealed plans to port BAYC NFTs into its metaverse as playable avatars.

"The Avatar collections notice boosted utility for their NFT holders within our gaming virtual world. Through the interoperability of NFTs, they will be able to turn second collectible prototype NFTs into 3D playable avatars that are animated, tin run, spring, socialize, play games, and collaborate with their other peer Avatars in The Sandbox," the web log post read.

Bored Ape NFT 3749 Avatar: Source: The Sandbox

Related: OpenSea bug appears to have destroyed about $100K in NFTs

Co-ordinate to data from OpenSea, NFT sales volume on the secondary market place cooled down in September, with top projects such as CryptoPunks, Art Blocks and BAYC all seeing declines in their 7-solar day book of 85%, 82% and 69%, respectively.

Only 1 NFT project out of the peak twenty has seen an increment in seven-twenty-four hour period volume, with Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann's Loot (for Adventures) NFTs seeing an increase of 8.42%.

NFT sales volume: OpenSea

Information from Dune Analytics also shows that NFT floor prices are on a downward trend of late, dropping from 1.02 ETH on Aug. 30 to sit at effectually 0.twoscore ETH on Sept. 9. However, this doesn't necessarily indicate a bearish tendency for the NFT sector, as the price tin exist impacted by new projects emerging on the market place that sell for lower prices.