Basel Social Club Raffle Puts an Andy Warhol Dollar Bill in Play
A SFr10 ticket is giving Basel’s June art week an unusually pointed twist: a raffle for a signed Andy Warhol dollar bill, organized by Zurich gallery suns.works for Basel Social Club’s fifth edition. By yesterday afternoon, more than 100 people had entered the lottery, which allows for as many as 2,000 tickets and will be drawn on June 20.
The prize is a framed dollar bill bearing an abstracted drawing of a Campbell soup can. According to the organizers, the work was authenticated by Warhol’s foundation in the 1980s, adding a layer of art-historical and market interest to an event that is also explicitly charitable.
Proceeds from the raffle will go to Basel Social Club and Pro Specie Rara, the Swiss organization focused on preserving rare crops and livestock. The lottery is being supervised by the Basel canton police permits and licensing authority, underscoring the formal structure behind what might otherwise read as a playful fair-week diversion.
Lorenzo Bernet said he cannot profit from the raffle because it is being run through an association. That detail matters in Basel, where the line between commerce, philanthropy, and spectacle is often especially visible during the fair’s busiest days.
Basel Social Club’s fifth edition runs until June 20, and the raffle offers a compact example of how the city’s art ecosystem operates beyond the main fair halls. Even in a week defined by blue-chip booths and satellite events, a small-ticket lottery can still reveal the social and institutional networks that keep Basel’s cultural life moving.
