The Ultimate Guide to NBA TopShot — digital NBA collectibles on the blockchain
Quick summary
Imagine your favorite basketball moment as a collectible, owned by you, fully digital, tradeable at any time of the day with anyone in the world from the convenience of your mobile phone or computer.
NBA TopShot is a platform to purchase, trade, showcase and play with NBA collectibles. These moments are short video clips that are sold in packs and directly owned by you — the fan. The cool thing: Your ownership right exists on the blockchain, allowing you to take these moments anywhere. The ownership and transaction history can be easily verified and these virtual collectibles do not suffer from physical decay. There is no risk of frauds, scams or counterfeits.
Moments are similar to conventional sports trading cards, just better. A moment is defined as: Play (eg Dunk, Steal)+ Set + Serial number.
“High flying dunks. No look dimes. Game saving blocks. The level of drama and skill in NBA basketball is simply unmatched in the sports world. Now you can own a piece of that action.
The NBA, NBPA, and Dapper Labs have teamed up to create NBA Top Shot, a revolutionary new game in which jaw-dropping plays and unforgettable highlights become collectibles that you can own forever.”
— Source: NBA TopShot
What can I do with these moments
You have true ownership of these moments, so there are no boundaries to what you can do.
Display your authenticity and depth of your fandom: Ownership records exist on the blockchain and are visible to anyone. You can show your level of fandom to friends and also find out if someone has really been the superfan, he’s claiming to be 🤔
Trade: There’s a secondary market for NBA TopShot moments which is getting bigger every day. Fans are actively buying, selling or swapping. Financial aspects are part and parcel of NBA TopShot. Be an astute collector and trader to generate profits. Mini-games and challenges on NBA TopShot encourage active participation and purchases of missing moments. We’ll cover more of this in future blog posts.
Showcases, mini-games and challenges: The team from TopShot runs special campaigns that require participants to collect a certain amount of moments. In return, TopShot drops unique, limited edition moments that are not available for purchase in packs. These are the real gems which typically have less than 150 moments in edition size.
These mini-games create a lot of demand for moments on the marketplace.
Fantasy Sports: In a given week, pick your favorite player and guess how many dunks, steals, 3 pointers he will realize per game. Moments that score poorly get eliminated. We participated in one round of fantasy TopShot, really enjoyed it and even won first place.
How can I get my hands on these moments
Moments are sold in packs. Some packs are exclusively for a specific Set, eg Throwdown or So Fresh. Some Sets are released in waves. Some of these waves have exclusive moments that do not appear in later waves.
You never really quite know what moment is in your pack. Lady Luck decides which moments you will be drawing. In case you cannot get your hands on a specific moment, do not worry: Just head over to the marketplace and purchase it from another community member.
As you can see , there are various types of sets which sell out quickly. They come at different price points depending on the rarity level of the moments included.
What makes a specific moment more desirable + valuable
Moments are classified by rarity level:
Legendary: Edition size per moment of 50 and included in the higher priced packs
Rare: Edition sizes of 250–300 and included in mid-priced packs
Common: Large edition sizes and cheap to buy. Common moments might get retired which then caps the edition size.
The rarer a moment, the higher the value. Hence, legendary moments typically cost most. For a given moment in a set, the lower the serial number, the higher the value. As an example, #1 moment of Ky Bowman from the Metallic Gold set would sell at $439 vs #82 of that set at $22.
Also, certain players are more expensive to purchase than others. After all, it’s a collectible and only the most performing players will retain a fan base and value in the future.
If a moment’s serial number matches the jersey number, there’s a premium attached to the moment.
Be social
TopShot moments are designed to be social experiences. There’s a ton of ways how you can interact with the community or friends.
Discord: Join the Discord server and chit chat the whole day away
Live Pack Breaks: Join these Live Breaks to open packs together with other community members. It’s for fun and also allows you to trade moments before they hit the marketplace
Community feed: There’s a feed on TopShot that shows the moments people have found in packs. Much better than Youtube or watching TV.
Social media: TopShot has an easy-to-use link to share your moments and showcases on Twitter, FB or IG so your friends can see what amazing moments you have in your collection.
What’s next
This is a short glimpse into the mechanics of NBA TopShot. Watch our upcoming posts about how to analyze data which will help you pick the most undervalued moments. The great thing about TopShot is that you can collect them for fun, trade for profit or do both.
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