Marvel Masterpieces Avengers collection shows NFTs aren't dead, they've just grown up

Whatever happened to NFTs? you might be wondering if you've just joined us direct from 2021. After the NFT boom imploded, you would be forgiven for thinking that tokenised digital artworks no longer exists (see our explainer on What are NFTs?).

But not so. The concept behind NFTs lives on. It's just that brands might not be calling them that after the term became bound up with cryptocurrency speculation. Take the recent Marvel Masterpieces Avengers: Asprey Studio Collection.

Billed as Marvel's first fine art sculptures, the collection features physical models of 60 Marvel characters in sterling silver, and they're complemented by corresponding digital artwork. Just don't call them NFTs; they're "dynamic digital art".

Asprey says each digital work in the Marvel Masterpieces Avengers: Asprey Studio Collection is based on a single panel from early Marvel comic books but reimagined in 3D. Its team sculpted them by hand layer-by-layer using digital clay modelling and then animated them frame by frame.

The digital pieces were then minted on the Ethereal blockchain after purchase, in order to provide a record of authenticity and ownership, fulfilling the original objective behind the use of blockchain for non-fungible tokens.

“Each digital artwork is ‘alive’,” says Alastair Walker, Chief Creative Officer at Asprey. “It moves very subtly and unpredictably. The average person spends 27 seconds looking at art, so we wanted to have the digital artwork look slightly different each time you see it.”

As for the physical sculptures, these were created by master silversmiths at the Asprey Studio Atelier in Kent, through a multi-stage process combining traditional silversmithing with modern techniques, the studio says.

Alongside the main collection, Captain America (above), Iron Man, Thor, and Thanos have also been produced as one-off metre-tall sculptures. The pieces are intended to tap into recent interest in comic-derived imagery in fine art, as demonstrated by Jeff Koons’s Hulk polychrome bronze sculptures.

Pieces will be on view at Asprey Studio's gallery in Mayfair, London, until February 2026. You can learn more on the website.