NEW YORK, November 7. /TASS/. A more than 100-kilogram golden toilet titled "America" will be auctioned off at Sotheby's in New York on November 18, The New York Times (NYT) reports.

Citing sources, the newspaper stated that the starting price of the toilet, designed by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan and owned by the US billionaire Steve Cohen, is ten million dollars.

The hedge-fund manager of Point72 and owner of the New York Mets baseball team purchased the golden toilet from the Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017. Cattelan produced two such toilets with flushing mechanisms. However, in 2019, one of them was stolen from an exhibition of the artist's work at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.

The toilet is fully functional, and auctioneers state that potential buyers can inspect the unique artifact ahead of the auction, though they are not permitted to sit on it. Cattelan rose to fame after his artwork featuring a banana taped to a wall sold for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year.

Cohen possesses an impressive art collection and is known for acquiring works that blend dark humor with political undertones. Among them is the iconic painting ‘Flag’ by Jasper Johns (1958), a piece inspired by the American flag. The billionaire also owns a 1991 artwork by English artist Damien Hirst titled ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,’ which features a tiger shark preserved in a formaldehyde solution.