Pest Control Office: A Guide To Verifying Banksy Prints

Banksy and his artwork have captivated audiences with his elusive identity, satirical art, market demand and compelling commentary on social and political issues. However, with such fame and the rising value of his art comes the inevitable rise of forgeries in the market.

MyArtBroker are experts in this area, and always on hand to answer any questions you might have. However, with Banksy and his authentication body, Pest Control Office, the rules are simple, but specific. Anyone that makes out it’s more complicated should be treated with caution.

Looking to buy or sell an original Banksy artwork? Here is everything you need to know about Pest Control.

Use a trusted intermediary with a track record that only sells Banksy’s only with Pest Control certification. Anyone worth working with on the purchase of your Banksy should have a good and long reputation for dealing in Banksy works. Those that don’t will likely offer work without COAs or be chancing it, but bad reputations are extremely quick to form and impossible to shake off, so do your homework.

Once you’ve paid for the work the certificate should be sent to you separately from the print itself, this is good practice and something that those with experience do often. The certificate is as valuable as the print and this adds extra protection.

If you have already purchased a Banksy artwork with a COA via the secondary market we recommend you register yourself as the new owner as soon as possible. This helps verify your transaction, prevents other people from pretending it's theirs and helps filter out fakes. There is a fee for this service via Pest Control which you will get back if the work is fake.

If you’re still unsure, don’t buy it.

Pest Control authenticates only commercial works, such as limited-edition silkscreen prints and original artworks that Banksy specifically intended for commercial distribution. Banksy’s print works are probably one of the most forged categories in the contemporary art market. To combat misattribution and fraud, Pest Control ensures that only legitimate prints are recognised when accompanied by the corresponding COA, allowing collectors to buy and sell with confidence, and those works without should not be traded, making reputable galleries, dealers and auction houses take a clear line between what they can and what they can not trade with confidence.

Some gift prints do get COAs - not the mass editions like Dismaland but works from other editions which were meant for resale, speak to the team if you need guidance.

Street artworks, including murals on walls, doors, and found objects, are not authenticated, as they are considered public art rather than commercial pieces. Therefore you will not find an authentic COA for a street work. Banksy has made it publicly clear that street works are intended for public display and are not to be owned or therefore traded between private parties. Any streetwork in circulation has therefore been removed without permission and should be treated as potential stolen property until proven otherwise.

Whilst street works circulate on the market and can be said to be valued at very high prices, often exaggerated and blown up by the media surrounding the event, the reality is they are very easily faked, mimicked and duplicated, allowing for fakes to be made and in circulation within a short time frame of the original creation. It is our advice to not take the risk of being offered anything that can not be verified, and approved by Pest Control.

Banksy Memorabilia are generally not certified either. There are pop culture items that may hold a value with good evidence of provenance on the secondary market, but without a certificate are largely untradable as serious works of art or value holding collectables.

Banksy does not in any official capacity produce ‘merch’ for sale. Any product claiming to be a ‘Banksy item’ (such as printed canvases, T-shirts, or collectibles) is almost certainly unauthorized. The only exceptions are small, official releases through Banksy’s Gross Domestic Product™ (GDP), which are always publicly announced and Pest Control makes it clear what the lines are when it comes to selling, when, how and with what documentation.

In all cases if you own or are considering purchasing a Banksy work, and are expecting the work to hold its value upon resale, a valid Certificate of Authenticity (COA) from Banksy’s Pest Control Office is essential. Without it, a piece is not considered officially verified and may not be accepted for resale by galleries or auction houses.

There are a few reasons for the existence of Pest Control. Banksy makes revenue through the artist resale rights of his work (ARR). Helping to manage responsible sales of authentic works for the industry allows for ethical and good business.

Banksy is more than aware of the theft and forgeries industry in his own market. The Pest Control rules avoid any unauthorized Banksy products claiming to be official merchandise and fakes circulating, and works being stolen from public areas where they were intended to be seen and enjoyed by the public. Banksy is first and foremost a street artist and he has made its very clear this is where he intends street works to stay.

Pest Control guarantees authenticity, ensuring that collectors can buy and sell with confidence. It also serves as a protection mechanism against fraud, confusion, and unauthorised attributions, helping to sustain the legitimacy of Banksy’s market while preventing exploitation by unauthorized commercial entities.

No. But any work offered without a COA by any party should be treated with serious caution. If a work does not have, or can not get a Pest Control Cert, it does not indicate that the work is fake, but simply that works that are intended by Banksy to be traded will have the potential to do so with their COA, meaning without one the works lacks both the verification and therefore the inherent value.

Post-2020 Pest Control Certificates:

Post-2020 COAs incorporate additional security measures, such as a rat illustration within a coffee cup stain and a unique serial number. These features make it increasingly difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. New COA’s retain the half of the Di-faced tenner.

These post-2020 certificates look like this:

Banksy’s meteoric rise to fame, coupled with the high value of his works, has made him a target for forgers. Original pieces can sell for millions, making it crucial to authenticate any Banksy artwork before purchasing.

The allure of Banksy lies in his enigmatic persona, his biting social commentary, and his ability to challenge the establishment. These factors have fueled demand, but they’ve also attracted counterfeiters eager to exploit the market.

Banksy’s art stands out because it challenges perceptions, satirises the familiar, and defies the obvious. His work is undeniably clever, but it also relies on our ability to interpret it - a key part of its impact.

That said, Banksy prints are surprisingly easy to fake. Many are simple, two-colour designs printed on paper, and his stencil-based technique is deliberately straightforward. While this minimalist approach is intentional, it means that forgers don’t need to be master artists to produce convincing replicas.

With the Banksy market skyrocketing since 2020, the risk of counterfeits has never been higher - some estimates suggest that fake Banksy works may now outnumber genuine ones. Without a Pest Control Office certificate, buyers are in dangerous waters.

No matter how tempting a deal may seem, if it feels too good to be true, it almost certainly is - especially when it comes to Banksy.

Fraudulent Banksy works are a persistent issue, with millions of pounds lost to scams each year. In some cases, in many instances con artists have sold forged prints online, passing them off as genuine limited editions. They even occasionally end up at smaller auction houses, where the certificate itself has been faked, or indeed the provenance of a work without a certificate. Pest Control plays a crucial role in mitigating fraud by verifying authenticity.

As a rule, Pest Control won’t authenticate Banksy street works, not least because doing so would implicate the artist in criminal activity – in the UK, graffiti artists can face a fine or even imprisonment, under the Criminal Damage Act 1971. But, ultimately there’s the fact the artist wants his stencil paintings to remain in their original context. It’s argued that street art is no longer street art once its hung up in a museum, but there’s sometimes little choice if a building needs renovating or is even being knocked down – as would have been the case with Banksy’s famous gun-toting rat in Liverpool, a piece that would have been lost forever when the building it was painted on was being converted into luxury flats.

Banksy has even refused to authenticate some of his own works, to both put people off buying his street art and stop dealers from making a profit from it. Back in 2008, at the time some of his works were fetching millions of pounds, the urban artists famously scuppered the sale of five pieces of street art at a Lyle and Turnbull auction, by issuing a statement urging buyers to boycott the sale.

He said: “Graffiti art has a hard enough life as it is – with council workers wanting to remove it and kids wanting to draw moustaches on it, before you add hedge fund managers wanting to chop it out and hang it over the fireplace.

Adding: “For the sake of keeping all street art where it belongs I’d encourage people not to buy anything by anybody unless it was created for sale in the first place.”

In the case of screenprints and works commercially intended, Banksy largely controls the secondary market of his work (through the tough and strategic creation of Pest Control) and thrives in the print market place, holding a handful of good relationships with reputable dealerships and rightly receiving artist resale royalties on the sale of his work in the secondary market. He works tirelessly to protect the market and control forgers from taking over the market and devaluing the authenticity of this work.

For more information on the Pest Control process and certificate authentication, get in touch with the team at MyArtBroker, who will talk you through the process via email at info@myartbroker.com, and we’ll reply to your query or give you a call back if you wish.