Rude Copper

The first one out the door

Rude Copper is the print that started Banksy's market. Released in 2002, it is described by researchers of his editions as the first of his commercial prints: the first image he put out as a multiple rather than painting it once on a wall. It was produced with Steve Lazarides, then acting as his agent, and published under Pictures on Walls, the London print outlet the two had launched in 2001.

The production was improvised. The run was planned as 100 prints and raised to 250 at the last minute. Around 50 were signed, roughly 30 were hand-finished with unique spray-painting, some were tagged with an anarchy symbol, and many extra impressions were printed outside the numbered edition. Some carry a red Banksy stamp, the print was issued on two different paper stocks, and some impressions are numbered out of 100, a trace of the original plan.

The release price was £40. Lazarides had no gallery space at the time, and he sold the first prints out of the trunk of his car.

A bobby flipping the bird

The image is a single uniformed British officer wearing the tall custodian helmet of the friendly neighborhood bobby on the beat, extending his middle finger toward the viewer. Banksy foreshortens the arm so the hand seems to push out of the frame while the body recedes, which makes the viewer the target of the insult. The palette is stark black-and-white stencil work, and the face is half in shadow.

One print-market source ties the image to the Terrorism Act 2000, whose Section 44 let British police stop and search people in designated areas without the usual requirement of suspicion. In January 2010 the European Court of Human Rights ruled those powers incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and from March 2011 Section 44 was treated as repealed.

The same source names the model for the officer as the artist Jay Jay Burridge, said to have worked in a studio near Banksy's, and reports that the image first appeared on a London wall as two officers making the same gesture before the print reduced it to one. These details come from a single source and are reported here as such.

Banksy and his agent

Banksy began as a freehand graffiti artist in Bristol in the early 1990s, as part of the DryBreadZ Crew, and by 2000 had turned to stencils because they took far less time to complete. In Bristol he met the photographer Steve Lazarides, who began selling his work and became his agent.

Lazarides, born around 1969 and raised in Bristol, was commissioned by a magazine to photograph Banksy in 1997 and stayed on as driver and photographer before becoming his gallerist. He opened his first London gallery in 2006. Accounts of when the two split differ: Lazarides's biography says they parted in 2008, while Banksy's says he left his agent in May 2009 and named Pest Control, the handling service that acts for him, as the only point of sale for new works.

Rude Copper opens a long run of Banksy images aimed at the police and other figures of authority, including Flying Copper and the kissing police officers, and is often treated as the first move in that series.

London, 2002

In 2002 Banksy was still an anonymous street artist with no gallery. That summer he had his first Los Angeles show, Existencilism, at a tiny venue in Silver Lake, on view from July 19 to August 18. The print market that would later make his editions some of the most traded contemporary prints did not yet exist; a buyer handed Lazarides £40.

Britain that year marked the Queen's Golden Jubilee and mourned Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, who died seven weeks apart. The Terrorism Act 2000 had recently given police the power to stop and search without suspicion, the backdrop one source gives for the image.

From £40 to six figures

Before 2020 the signed and hand-finished versions sold in the tens of thousands. A signed impression brought $26,245 at auction in London in September 2008. A hand-finished impression sold in London in December 2011 for $15,685, and a signed one numbered 10/100 sold there in January 2015 for $49,290.

The surge came in 2020. In January a signed impression numbered 1/250 sold in London for $131,115, and that September a signed impression numbered 2/250, described by one source as an anarchy-symbol example, sold in London for £167,500 with fees, or $221,100, on a hammer price of £125,000. It remains the auction record for a signed Rude Copper. In November 2020 an unsigned, unnumbered hand-finished impression from outside the edition sold in an online auction in the United States for $215,820, and in May 2022 another sold in France for EUR 182,000, recorded as $192,255.

Prices then fell back. A signed impression brought $155,050 in London in October 2021. In 2024 a signed impression numbered 10/100 sold in Los Angeles for $89,400 and another, 220/250, sold in the United Kingdom for $63,410. Hand-finished impressions sold for $79,820 in London in July 2023 and EUR 78,000 ($81,780) in France in December 2024. The most recent signed result on record is $68,275, in London in September 2025.

Unsigned impressions trade in a far lower band. Their auction high was $81,365 in October 2020, and unsigned results in 2026 ran from about $17,300 to $18,900.

What to look for

The standard edition is a black-and-white screenprint on a 59 x 42 cm sheet, numbered out of 250. Signed impressions carry Banksy's signature; a few are numbered out of 100 instead. Hand-finished impressions have unique spray-painted color, and some carry a black or yellow anarchy symbol. Several of the hand-finished impressions sold since 2020 were unsigned and unnumbered, from outside the edition.

Because so much of the edition was improvised, numbering is not always tidy: auction records include a hand-finished impression numbered 224/100 and one catalogued with a 'BANKSY NYC' marking. Signature, numbering, hand-finishing and authentication should each be checked separately; Pest Control is the body that authenticates Banksy's work.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint on wove paper; hand-finished impressions add unique spray-paint

Dimensions

Sheet 59 x 42 cm (23 x 16 1/2 in)

Edition

250, about 50 signed, about 30 hand-finished, some numbered out of 100, plus numerous proofs outside the edition

Catalogue raisonne

None stated in the sources

Current owners

Dispersed among private collectors; no public collection holding is documented in the sources

Timeline

1. 1997

   Steve Lazarides is commissioned to photograph Banksy and begins working with him.

2. 2000

   The Terrorism Act 2000 gives British police new stop-and-search powers, the backdrop one source gives for the image.

3. 2001

   Banksy and Lazarides launch Pictures on Walls to sell prints.

4. 2002

   Rude Copper is released at £40 in an edition raised from 100 to 250, about 50 signed and about 30 hand-finished.

5. Jul 19, 2002

   Banksy's first Los Angeles show, Existencilism, opens.

6. Sep 11, 2008

   A signed impression sells at auction in London for $26,245.

7. May 2009

   Banksy parts with Lazarides and makes Pest Control the only point of sale for new works (Lazarides's biography gives 2008).

8. Jan 2010

   The European Court of Human Rights rules the Section 44 stop-and-search powers incompatible with the Convention.

9. Jan 28, 2015

   A signed impression numbered 10/100 sells in London for $49,290.

10. Jan 21, 2020

    Signed impression 1/250 sells in London for $131,115.

11. Sep 4, 2020

    Signed impression 2/250 sells in London for $221,100, the auction record for a signed Rude Copper.

12. Nov 24, 2020

    An unsigned hand-finished impression sells online in the United States for $215,820, the high for the hand-finished version.

13. May 10, 2022

    A hand-finished impression sells in France for EUR 182,000.

14. Mar 1, 2024

    Signed impression 10/100 sells in Los Angeles for $89,400.

15. Sep 30, 2025

    Signed impression 211/250 sells in London for $68,275.

The world in 2002

• Feb 9, 2002

  Princess Margaret dies at 71.

• Mar 30, 2002

  Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother dies at 101.

• Jun 4, 2002

  The Queen rides to St Paul's Cathedral for a service marking her Golden Jubilee.

• Jul 3, 2002

  A man decapitates a statue of Margaret Thatcher on display in London.

• Jul 13, 2002

  The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art opens in Gateshead.

• Jul 25, 2002

  The Commonwealth Games open in Manchester.

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, Rude Copper is number 48 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 (45 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Rude Copper was planned as an edition of 100 and raised to 250 at the last minute.
• Steve Lazarides sold the first impressions from the trunk of his car because he had no gallery.
• The release price was £40; a signed impression sold for £167,500 with fees in 2020.
• One source names the artist Jay Jay Burridge as the model for the officer.
• Some impressions are numbered out of 100, a trace of the original plan for a smaller edition.
• An unsigned, unnumbered hand-finished impression has sold for almost as much as the best signed one: $215,820 against $221,100, both in 2020.