Man who sold cubes of garbage collected from Taylor Swift's wedding sells out in 24 hours
Topics: Taylor Swift
Thomas Bamford
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Kevin Mazur
Topics: Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce may have gone to serious lengths to keep their wedding under wraps, but that hasn't stopped one enterprising artist from cashing in on the day in the most unexpected way possible.
The couple tied the knot at Madison Square Garden in New York, with a guest list packed full of famous faces and security tight enough that fans camped outside were left completely in the dark.
The only confirmation the ceremony had actually happened came when a message reading 'JusT&T Married' flashed up on nearby billboards.
While most people assumed that was as close as they'd ever get to the big day, artist Justin Gignac had other ideas.
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As part of his ongoing NYC Garbage project, he collected actual rubbish from outside the arena on the day of the wedding and turned it into a very unusual keepsake.
Gignac packaged up the trash into small 'pocket garbage' cubes, selling just 50 of them at $25 each.
The listing went live on July 8, and within 24 hours, every single one had sold out.
Speaking to BBC News, Gignac explained the thinking behind the project. "I figured Swifties would never want to part with their wedding garbage, so, they can take it with them wherever they go," he said.
He also shared a short TikTok promoting the drop, which ended up racking up more than 800,000 views after being picked up by Swifties across the platform.
Each cube cost $25, and appears to have sold purely on novelty value rather than anything valuable actually being inside.
In the now-viral clip, Gignac leaned into the romance of it all, describing the rubbish as being "collected from the edge of a love story outside Madison Square Garden, as close to Taylor & Travis' big day as you could've gotten without an invite."
The wedding cubes aren't a one-off. Gignac has been running his New York City Garbage project since 2001, after a colleague bet him he couldn't sell something nobody would ever want to buy. More than two decades on, he's shifted over 1,700 cubes to buyers in more than 30 countries, with previous limited editions built around major moments including the Republican National Convention, a Yankees World Series win, and Obama's inauguration.
For the wedding drop specifically, Gignac reportedly suited up in a full tuxedo and used a litter picker to gather debris from the streets around Madison Square Garden on the day of the ceremony.
Among the items said to have ended up inside the cubes were cigarette butts, bottle caps, lengths of caution tape, a stray AirPod, a Ring Pop, and even an ovulation test.
Shipping for each cube reportedly added a further $10 on top of the $25 asking price, meaning fans paid $35 in total for a small piece of rubbish from outside one of the year's most talked-about celebrity weddings.
UNILAD has contacted Justin Gignac for comment.