Dollar Sign ($) (F. & S. II.277)

What do you love most?

Warhol told the story himself: "I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money." His dollar bills of 1962 became the first series in which he experimented with the screenprint process.

Nearly twenty years later he came back to money, this time to its symbol rather than its paper. In 1981 he began a body of work devoted to the dollar sign that grew into drawings, paintings and screenprints. Unusually for an artist built on borrowed photographs and packaging, Warhol drew the motif himself, drafting dollar signs over and over in a loose, gestural hand. Large drawings served as studies for the final painted silkscreens.

Warhol was open about the subject. "I like money on the wall," he said, and elsewhere: "Buying is much more American than thinking, and I'm as American as they come." He also said that "making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

A Pittsburgh kid and the American dream

Warhol was born in Pennsylvania in 1928 to immigrant parents and grew up in Pittsburgh's South Oakland neighborhood during the Great Depression. Luxuries were scarce; he took free art classes at the Carnegie Institute. He began making money only after moving to New York, where he started his career as a commercial artist.

Commentators link the series to the dawn of the Reagan era, and note that Warhol made his Guns and Knives in tandem with the Dollar Signs, conflating money, power and violence. The writer Arthur C. Danto wrote that Warhol's dollar sign is as much an emblem of America as the flag.

January 1982 in SoHo

The Dollar Signs were first exhibited in January 1982 at a SoHo gallery at 142 Greene Street in New York. The same year the art magazine Artforum published Warhol's dollar signs as a gatefold commission.

The paintings were not shown again as a group until 1997, when a Beverly Hills gallery mounted Andy Warhol: Dollar Signs from November 1 to 29 with a catalog essay by Danto. Its announcement put Warhol's point bluntly: in the Dollar Signs he said that "big-time art is big-time money" and printed the sign for money as the sign for art.

Reading II.277

II.277 is one of six screenprints that make up the $(1) portfolio, cataloged by Feldman and Schellmann as II.274 through II.279. It is printed on Lenox Museum Board and measures about 19 3/4 by 15 5/8 inches. Published measurements vary slightly: 50.16 x 39.6 cm, 50.2 x 39.8 cm and 50.2 x 40 cm all appear.

The edition is 60, with 10 artist's proofs, 3 printer's proofs and 15 trial proofs. Impressions are hand-signed and numbered in pencil, at lower right according to one dealer. Dealers stress that each print in the portfolio is unique: the colors vary from sheet to sheet. One gallery describes an example in which red, green and metallic gold clash against a Carolina blue ground, with line drawing and texture that make the sign look like weathered paint on the side of a building.

Sources disagree about who published the portfolio. One dealer says Artforum published it in 1982; a sale listing for impression 56/60 says it was published by the artist. One dealer also lists the II.274-279 portfolio at 40 by 32 inches in an edition of 35, which does not match the measurements and edition given by every other source reviewed here.

Money about money

Original Dollar Sign paintings sit at the top of the market. A 1981 Dollar Signs painting with four rows of dollar signs on a duck-egg blue ground sold at auction in London in July 2015 for GBP 9,925,000.

The edition of II.277 is only 60. One market tracker records II.277 selling at auction ten times since 2006, with hammer prices ranging from GBP 25,431 in June 2025 to GBP 55,000 in December 2022. Its listing for the June 17, 2025 sale gives a hammer price of $33,673 and a total of $40,408 including premium.

Across the whole Dollar Sign series the same tracker counts 143 auction appearances.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board

Dimensions

About 19 3/4 x 15 5/8 in. (50.2 x 39.8 cm); published figures vary slightly

Catalogue raisonne

Feldman and Schellmann II.277

Portfolio

$(1), six screenprints, II.274-279

Edition

60; 10 AP, 3 PP, 15 TP

Owners

An edition of 60 in private hands; no single public owner identified

Timeline

1. 1928

   Andy Warhol is born in Pennsylvania.

2. 1962

   Warhol's dollar bill becomes the first series in which he experiments with screenprinting.

3. 1981

   Warhol begins the Dollar Signs: drawings, paintings and, the next year, prints.

4. Jan 1982

   The Dollar Signs are first exhibited at a SoHo gallery at 142 Greene Street.

5. 1982

   Artforum publishes Warhol's dollar signs as a gatefold; the $(1) portfolio, II.274-279, is issued in an edition of 60.

6. 1987

   Warhol dies in New York; his estate is later estimated at $100 million.

7. Nov 1, 1997

   Andy Warhol: Dollar Signs opens in Beverly Hills, the first showing of the paintings since 1982.

8. 2006

   First recorded auction sale of II.277 in one market tracker's records.

9. Jul 2015

   A 1981 Dollar Signs painting sells at auction in London for GBP 9,925,000.

10. Dec 2022

    II.277 reaches a GBP 55,000 hammer price, its high in one tracker's record.

11. Jun 17, 2025

    II.277 sells at auction for a reported $40,408 including premium, a GBP 25,431 hammer.

The world in 1982

• Apr 1982

  Argentine forces invade the Falkland Islands, beginning the Falklands War.

• Jun 11, 1982

  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is released in the United States.

• Jun 14, 1982

  Argentine forces in the Falklands surrender.

• Aug 17, 1982

  The first compact discs are produced in Germany.

• Nov 29, 1982

  Michael Jackson releases Thriller in the United States.

• Dec 26, 1982

  Time magazine names the computer its Man of the Year, the first non-human so honored.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Dollar Sign ($) (F. & S. II.277) is number 60 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (60 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Warhol drew the dollar sign himself rather than appropriating a photograph or a package, a rare departure for him.
• He said the subject came from a friend who asked, "Well, what do you love most?"
• Each impression in the $(1) portfolio is described as unique, so two copies of II.277 may not share the same colors.
• Warhol made Guns and Knives at the same time as the Dollar Signs.
• After their 1982 debut the Dollar Sign paintings were not shown again as a group until 1997.
• Artforum ran Warhol's dollar signs as a gatefold in 1982.