I recall walking through a street of San Francisco (though I can't remember which one - maybe the Haight somewhere) when I saw a big spray-painted piece of art on a wall above the top of a building. I instantly recognized it as being in the style of Banksy. I doubted it at the time because I'm a London expat and it seemed too much of a coincidence to have your "local" artist suddenly turn up in your new neighborhood.
It was only later I looked it up online and found it was actually his work. I'm actually a little surprised that stall at Central Park didn't at least get a few people questioning who the artist was. Perhaps they did, but for brevity the video doesn't show those interactions, because they didn't end up buying anything.
The pieces he sold here look intentionally mediocre. They're just reproductions using stencils he used a while ago on actual buildings. They look much better in their original context. Here they look flat and boring.
Banksy actually does some interesting stuff with paintings (http://imgur.com/S3CTKip) that's better than just using his old stencils on white canvases. My guess is he wanted these canvases to look like someone did the bare minimum to copy his most iconic stencils and make money off of Banksy's fame.
That said I would have liked to have bought one even if the real art is the entire performance and not the individual canvases being sold.
I think you're right - these look exactly like the Banksy 'reproductions' that are sold in high street poster stores up and down the UK. Most of them looked like a 30 second version of stencils / originals / prints that were released a long time ago.
I think that most people who knew who Banksy was prior to this probably would have looked, laughed and walked on. As for the guy who bought 4 of them for the walls of his new house - he can probably pay off a fair whack of his mortgage!
Over the last few years I'd imagine Banksy's made a fair few unsuspecting people a significant chunk of change... Good on him :-)
It was only later I looked it up online and found it was actually his work. I'm actually a little surprised that stall at Central Park didn't at least get a few people questioning who the artist was. Perhaps they did, but for brevity the video doesn't show those interactions, because they didn't end up buying anything.