The things you’re about to see might look like just a bunch of uninteresting everyday items that don’t deserve any attention, but every one of them has been hand carved from a single piece of wood.

Carving a piece of wood into a bunch of newspapers, or books is hard enough, but using trompe l’oeil painting techniques, Randall Rosenthal manages to make his works look just like the real thing. Trying to keep his audience guessing, he normally just allows just one of his sculptures to be touched, while leaving them to discover if the rest are also made of wood.

His “Lunch Money” sculpture, representing stacks of hundred dollar bills in a corrugated cardboard box took six weeks to carve and another six to finish painting. To get their hands on that kind of wooden cash, art lovers had to pay $25,000, the real kind.

Photos copyright of Randall Rosenthal. Thanks for the tip, Ryan!