A rough pencil sketch of MrBeast’s famous logo — the one that took about 10 minutes to draw back in 2018 — is heading to auction later this month, and Heritage Auctions thinks it could bring $20,000 or more.
The 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper features a simple, uncolored drawing of a roaring big cat facing right. The actual sketch is only about four inches square. There’s no blue coloring and, notably, no pink lightning bolt across the eye. That detail came later. What you’re looking at is essentially the first version of the mark that now appears on everything from YouTube thumbnails to Feastables chocolate bars.
According to the auction house, Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) sat down with a design firm called Central Equity Group around 2018 after being told he needed an original logo instead of a generic image he had been using. He told them he liked big jungle cats. An artist sketched something on the spot. Donaldson approved it right there. The whole thing reportedly took about ten minutes.
The consignor is Brandon Fuss-Cheatham, owner of that design firm, who kept the sketch in his files for eight years before deciding to put it up for sale. MrBeast himself is not involved. Buyers also won’t get any intellectual property rights to the logo — just the physical piece of paper.
Heritage Auctions has set a starting bid of $5,000 (closer to $6,100 with the buyer’s premium) for its Fall Sports Catalog Auction, running Oct. 23-25. Extended bidding on the lot starts at 10 p.m. CT on Oct. 24. The estimate sits at $20,000-plus.
Mike Provenzale, production manager at Heritage, put it this way: “MrBeast, our consignor, who runs a design firm, and an artist sat down in a 10-minute meeting. MrBeast told them he liked big jungle cats, the artist drew out this sketch, and MrBeast approved it right there.” He also noted that the animal was intentionally designed as a mix of several big cats rather than a pure tiger or panther.
Donaldson has never pretended the logo was some grand creative statement. In a WIRED interview earlier this year, he said, “Even though that logo has probably been seen a hundred billion times, I actually put very little thought into it when I was a little kid. I just kind of designed a tiger and here we are. My name, my logo — probably should have had more thought behind it. I’ll admit it.” He added that he’s still not entirely sure what animal it’s supposed to be. “I guess it’s kind of like a tiger.”
Provenzale pointed out that very little authentic MrBeast memorabilia has ever hit the auction market. “This is a one-of-one item,” he said. “From a collector’s aspect, this is really the only collectible that’s come out and reached the auction block.”
Whether collectors will pay five figures for a 10-minute sketch remains to be seen. But in an era when internet culture has its own artifacts, this particular piece of paper sits at a strange and interesting intersection — the casual origin of one of the most visible personal brands on the planet.
