Reading · The First Mint · RSS Amplifier

Listen.

People love rookies.

Like love them a lot.

There are few grails holier than rookie cards - even ones from companies that don’t exist anymore (i.e. Fleer).

There’s a special magic to a collectible being the “first” of that player; one that was made when the player was fresh and their potential was infinite. It’s like a time capsule that captures an athlete just as they are emerging into the spotlight.

Some of the biggest moments in our short history have come from high profile rookie sales, including the one that started it all: Jonathan Bales’ purchase of a Ja Morant Rookie Cosmic for $35,000 in January 2021.

And now almost three full years later we’re still seeing huge purchases rack up, like this week’s Sorare auction for the Wemby 1/1 that ended at $110k USD.

Wonder how much the Wemby 1/1 on Top Shot will go for.

Although s this asset is technically a game piece, it doesn’t change the fact that the digital card has become the HIGHEST SELLING Wemby collectible ever, beating out a physical card that went for $67,000 at Goldin this past year.

And now we come to Monday’s NBA Top Shot rookie drop, which has already created quit the buzz in the community.

The packs are $79, and can be reserved right now. Each pack is guarantee one of the following six rookie moments, minted to /4000:

Victor Wembanyama
Chet Homlgren (technically a rookie this year)
Scoot Henderson
Brandon Miller
Amen Thompson
Ausar Thompson

These packs are projected to be EV+, although only if you pull a Chet or Wemby. Each pack also comes with new /8000 commons (too high imo).

It’s become clear that both collectible and fantasy NFTs will mint each player into oblivion, which we should have expected from the very beginning since its exactly what the card world does.

So with that in mind, I think the “first” and designated rookie cards will always matter; both to collectors, to myself, and to the market now and into the future.

I think these types of drops *can* be profitable and an opportunity to both collect a sweet item and/or take a chance on the packs for a flip. Sports NFTs need these types of hard decisions for collector and profiteers to be mutually excited. And this is not financial advice - please keep that in mind.

My TS and AD collection now largely consists of rookies or debut moments, and I try to focus there and scoop them up on the cheap in the off season. I’m not sure if they’ll ever “pop off” or anything like that, but if you assume that Top Shot is still around in 10 years from now and that Wemby has probably amount 100-150 moments on the platform, I would say the only notable ones would either his very first or a championship.

And even if Top Shot wasn’t around then, I would assume that just like Fleer and other card companies that went out of business - the card would still matter to collectors.

However, there’s one wrinkle there. And it was pointed out this week on the world’s biggest podcast by the universe’s richest man.

Elon Musk discussed NFTs on Joe Rogan this week, and largely dumped on anything that isn’t on-chain; meaning NFTs where the image and media are hosted off the chain in a server (like Top Shot and many popular PFPs).

This is what has made Bitcoin Ordinals and CryptoPunks so popular: the fact that no matter what happens to their creators, the NFTs would live on forever.

So the natural caveat here for NFT Rookie cards is that their media files might cease to exist should the product go out of business, since the leagues would likely have the ability to close the servers hosting the data.

But the token would remain. Both on Flow (for top shot), and on Ethereum (for Sorare). And if that worst case scenario happened, would collectors of the future be interested in just a blockchain signature that was originally a player’s first NFT, but is now missing the image?

I actually think that would work on some level. But I doubt we’ll find out any time soon.

And for now, I’ll just get stoked for new rookie action coming into these platforms.

Enough of that. Let’s get to the top stories of the week.

If you don’t share this newsletter, your crush won’t speak to you for an entire week.

**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”

We got our charts back on board, and the numbers for October are in!

I would actually expect the numbers for the NBA products to grow quite a lot more in November, given that the season only launched on October 24. Especially for Top Shot with the rookie drop.

I’ve also been working on full year numbers for 2023 and the charts so far look spicy. Those will drop towards the end of December.

Just in time for the first ever in-season tournament, the team at Sorare has either paid or asked to be featured on the official NBA socials.

This came on the same day earlier this week that Sorare unveiled their In-Season tournament structure and prizing.

It’s actually pretty sweet, and a super fun way to play along with the tournament. You basically get a cumulative score of your top 5 scorers through the tournament, so picking the teams that go all the way really matters here.

What’s this all about? Is the NBA releasing another NFT project? Is it going to be like The Association, or maybe a clone of popular web3 game NFL Rivals?

Or could be the infamous Hardcourt, just revived under a new and much frencher master?

I believe it’s in fact a League or 1v1 style game within Sorare where you may even put your cards at risk during gameplay.

We’ll find out soon enough!

As the NFL season stretches into Week 9, Draft Kings' Reignmakers continues on its torrid pace (as seen above in the monthly rankings) by posting a large number of users and tons of secondary volume.

And these aren’t just small trades - every few weeks the platforms sees a handful of relatively large ones, including two different 1/1s that were moved this week.