With technology making everything possible, NBA Top Shot is the future of the trading card market. Different types of virtual pack of cards can be showcased, purchased and re-sold on the virtual marketplace. Some of the superstar cards such as Lebron James are being sold for as much as $300,000 USD!
Long story short, NBA Top Shot is a joint venture of the NBA, NBA Players Association and Dapper Labs to create a new experience for users to own unforgettable player highlights forever. It is a blockchain based platform that allows users to buy, sell and trader various specific, officially licensed NBA video highlights. These trading cards are similar to the idea of cryptocurrency, but are virtual cards that consist of individual NBA highlights.
So How Does It Work?
At first NBA makes clips of the highlights and Dapper Labs concludes how many of each highlight are to be sold and number them. Each highlight is loaded into digital packs, just like the regular trading cards and are sold on the NBA Top Shot website for prices starting from $1 to $250. A variety of regular, rare and legendary packs are put out on the website. Each price of the pack depends on the quality of the highlight, popularity of the player, and the exclusiveness of the clip. After a pack is purchased, these highlights go into your encrypted, secure highlight profile to be showcased or re-sold on the NBA Top Shot Marketplace.
The cards are unfolded in short highlighting clips into a package with 3D animations and player stats. The use of blockchain technology, helps them to ensure transparency in production and verification of the authenticities of these digital collectibles, known as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Top Shot has attracted many basketball fans ranging from traditional card collectors to fantasy sharps to crypto enthusiast to stock market traders. Honestly, new moments sell like hot cakes and faster than King James sneaker releases. The entry level packs which can be bought for $9, also contain three moments and is a low-cost way to acquire new users.
The Top Shot platform which is still in beta version has a marketplace that now does millions of dollars in transactions in a single day with over more than 80,000 users signed up. Many of these users talk and compare packs in an active NBA Top Shot Discord channel. The main pitch is being able to own a unique copy of a specific highlight that you can buy, trade or sell with other fans.
