NBA Top Shot - High Risk, High Reward?

[yiguiri2002]

Originally Posted by cardfund

A couple of thoughts, please note my data is not perfect, taken from evaluate.market and not at identical times.

In theory, the total market cap should increase as more sets are released, i.e when 2021 prizm comes out the total physical market cap for cards will increase greater than any decrease in other sets. In topshot, the addition of a new set seems to dilute the whole market rather than add to it despite different sets having different moments/print runs.



There are only a few sets that have shown any kind of resistance to the fall of their peak in market cap;



No surprise that the legendary sets have held up well, however what is surprising is the decline in Base Set 1 and Metallic Gold LE 1. Although their peaks were probably higher relative to other sets, one would still expect their decline not to be as severe.

This leads me to the following; Base Set 1 and earlier moments over time will not follow the traditional pattern in collectibles whereby earlier/more scarce sets are more valuable. I feel there is a key distinction for topshot in this regard. If we look at 2012 Prizm - yes it is the first prizm product, however I think it is pretty well-accepted that it is the most aesthetically pleasing prizm release. So we have a mix of scarcity+ aesthetics - same for pokemon 1st edition.

Topshot early sets have the scarcity, however it does not have the same aesthetic appeal (the moment itself). For star players, there are probably hundreds of other moments that are far more appealing than their current early moments, to the point that the moment itself will have a higher determination of value than print run. They are both intertwined but I believe it will be less so than what we see in traditional collectables.

i.e I wouldn't be surprised to see a series 7 Lebron Alley-Oop Dunk on Jason Terry /25000 be greater than most of his <1000 print run moments.

Of my immediate contacts, most of them have skipped physical cards and jumped straight into Topshot, as a result they don't follow traditional collectable participants behavior. Most of them have bought the moment based on how cool it is rather than looking at print run. I imagine a large portion of the market is of similar thinking.

Other;

~The Supply side of moments is worrying, essentially and endless printer with more ability to scale than physical cards. Rough count of moments owned is 4.1 million. What does this look like in a year's time?

~There is a serious issue with centralization of this platform. The inability to trade in secondary markets freely is a major issue that needs rectifying sooner rather than later. There is only one central access to your capital and one central access to market liquidity. I know there has been talk of third-party trading, but it is not necessarily in TPTB interest to do so.

~A lot of talk about 'wait till China gets involved', the platform will be banned and only open to people with VPNs and crypto will be able to access. No fiat will be going to Dapper, this would be an easy way to circumvent capital controls which is a big no no. Already have experienced the site being censored on wechat. Not to say there isn't growth in China/other regions but temper expectations.

~I have followed some of the "whales", they aren't liquidating like people are speculating, their moment count remains pretty flat and they are more active at the higher price points.

Overall I am still bullish but there is plenty that still needs to be established by the market.

Great breakdown! Thanks for the summary and your thoughts on the market. I agree with everything you've said, I would add some things on top:

- You being right about print runs not mattering as much is another sign that there is not much intersectionality between this and physical trading cards. I feel like there are complete different markets with different collectors...the few of us doing TS are either doing it for a profit or spending little (compared to cards).

- I feel like a big reason some of the early, limited sets are not dropping as hard it's because whales are the ones holding those moments. Those are easy to control that Series 2 Base, for example. I'm not saying they are manipulating the market, I think they are just super bullish. But I can't see those prices being realistic when comparing them to the rest of the market.

I've seen my port value crash and lost almost 50%...on the bright side, moments are almost at the price point where I can start collecting them.

[rysportguy]

Originally Posted by Howie7107

Potentially, but if you’re saying taking a mixed bag of their holdings and seeing how they do from today on I’m not really sold. There’s not any new liquidity coming in and supply is growing exponentially. Now if your point is just that they’ll do fine because of what they made to this point, then sure. I just think HODLing is a mistake.

Yeah we are on opposite sides here but that's totally fine. I think we find a bottom soon and climb back towards 2 billion market cap. Withdraws being widely available is going to be the biggest trigger for bigger money to roll in. I have no issue with supply growing exponentially as long as they are smart about it (keep it mostly lower level players and sprinkle in some rookies). That should just make the new supply worth less. Doesn't change the fact that only 15k can have the Lebron 3 pointer.

[Howie7107]

Originally Posted by rysportguy

Yeah we are on opposite sides here but that's totally fine. I think we find a bottom soon and climb back towards 2 billion market cap. Withdraws being widely available is going to be the biggest trigger for bigger money to roll in. I have no issue with supply growing exponentially as long as they are smart about it (keep it mostly lower level players and sprinkle in some rookies). That should just make the new supply worth less. Doesn't change the fact that only 15k can have the Lebron 3 pointer.

A spike in market cap doesn’t necessarily mean much at this point. We’re about to get like 3M new moments depending on how many people get a pre-order in. Also, bad news, there aren’t enough buyers for the LeBron 15K to hold its price. Lebron does cool sh*t all the time. He’ll get new cool moments over time and the price will get diluted slowly but surely.

[rysportguy]

Originally Posted by Howie7107

A spike in market cap doesn’t necessarily mean much at this point. We’re about to get like 3M new moments depending on how many people get a pre-order in. Also, bad news, there aren’t enough buyers for the LeBron 15K to hold its price. Lebron does cool sh*t all the time. He’ll get new cool moments over time and the price will get diluted slowly but surely.

You are assuming the Lebron cool stuff will be widely available. That is my point. If they are smart about it and the cool Lebron moments are all rare or better I have no issue with it. The 3 million new moments are going to be 90% worthless which is the way it should be. Most will probably (and should) be worth a couple dollars so that adds 9 million to the market cap. Should be easily swallowed up by growth instead of taken from other prior moments. I think your assumption is that we aren't going to see anymore growth which in that case you are correct we are screwed here. But if we see growth that is greater than the $9 million worth in moments added then that growth will be seen in the older moments.

BTW no clue what you mean by a spike in market cap won't matter. If all moments are worth $500 million in total more where do you think that money is going?

[Howie7107]

Originally Posted by rysportguy

You are assuming the Lebron cool stuff will be widely available. That is my point. If they are smart about it and the cool Lebron moments are all rare or better I have no issue with it. The 3 million new moments are going to be 90% worthless which is the way it should be. Most will probably (and should) be worth a couple dollars so that adds 9 million to the market cap. Should be easily swallowed up by growth instead of taken from other prior moments. I think your assumption is that we aren't going to see anymore growth which in that case you are correct we are screwed here. But if we see growth that is greater than the $9 million worth in moments added then that growth will be seen in the older moments.

BTW no clue what you mean by a spike in market cap won't matter. If all moments are worth $500 million in total more where do you think that money is going?

1) They have no interest in making cool LeBron moments scarce, in fact it’s just the opposite.

2) You’re grossly underestimating the value of the new moments. That would assume the floor of every new moment is $3, which just is too low. There’s also moments in there that will pull substantially more.

3) If we get to $2B market cap it’s likely to be a product of increased supply.

[rysportguy]

Originally Posted by Howie7107

1) They have no interest in making cool LeBron moments scarce, in fact it’s just the opposite.

2) You’re grossly underestimating the value of the new moments. That would assume the floor of every new moment is $3, which just is too low. There’s also moments in there that will pull substantially more.

3) If we get to $2B market cap it’s likely to be a product of increased supply.

Okay it looks like we just totally disagree on all points here lol

[colbycolbycolby]

They've made 4 million moments in the past 6 months? So you're looking at 8 million cards in the first year. Curious what the print run is on ALL Panini products in one year. Anybody?

[tjforce]

It's a good question of how this will play out long term......

What will hold value.... Good moments or Rare moments?

I know this isn't cards, but I still think a moment needs to stand out one way or another to do well. The way I can see see this playing out is that it either stands out because it's a unique moment (LeBron 3, Giannis first shot), or if they only mint a small amount.

[ronaldkosh]

Originally Posted by cardfund

A couple of thoughts, please note my data is not perfect, taken from evaluate.market and not at identical times.

In theory, the total market cap should increase as more sets are released, i.e when 2021 prizm comes out the total physical market cap for cards will increase greater than any decrease in other sets. In topshot, the addition of a new set seems to dilute the whole market rather than add to it despite different sets having different moments/print runs.



There are only a few sets that have shown any kind of resistance to the fall of their peak in market cap;



No surprise that the legendary sets have held up well, however what is surprising is the decline in Base Set 1 and Metallic Gold LE 1. Although their peaks were probably higher relative to other sets, one would still expect their decline not to be as severe.

This leads me to the following; Base Set 1 and earlier moments over time will not follow the traditional pattern in collectibles whereby earlier/more scarce sets are more valuable. I feel there is a key distinction for topshot in this regard. If we look at 2012 Prizm - yes it is the first prizm product, however I think it is pretty well-accepted that it is the most aesthetically pleasing prizm release. So we have a mix of scarcity+ aesthetics - same for pokemon 1st edition.

Topshot early sets have the scarcity, however it does not have the same aesthetic appeal (the moment itself). For star players, there are probably hundreds of other moments that are far more appealing than their current early moments, to the point that the moment itself will have a higher determination of value than print run. They are both intertwined but I believe it will be less so than what we see in traditional collectables.

i.e I wouldn't be surprised to see a series 7 Lebron Alley-Oop Dunk on Jason Terry /25000 be greater than most of his <1000 print run moments.

Of my immediate contacts, most of them have skipped physical cards and jumped straight into Topshot, as a result they don't follow traditional collectable participants behavior. Most of them have bought the moment based on how cool it is rather than looking at print run. I imagine a large portion of the market is of similar thinking.

Other;

~The Supply side of moments is worrying, essentially and endless printer with more ability to scale than physical cards. Rough count of moments owned is 4.1 million. What does this look like in a year's time?

~There is a serious issue with centralization of this platform. The inability to trade in secondary markets freely is a major issue that needs rectifying sooner rather than later. There is only one central access to your capital and one central access to market liquidity. I know there has been talk of third-party trading, but it is not necessarily in TPTB interest to do so.

~A lot of talk about 'wait till China gets involved', the platform will be banned and only open to people with VPNs and crypto will be able to access. No fiat will be going to Dapper, this would be an easy way to circumvent capital controls which is a big no no. Already have experienced the site being censored on wechat. Not to say there isn't growth in China/other regions but temper expectations.

~I have followed some of the "whales", they aren't liquidating like people are speculating, their moment count remains pretty flat and they are more active at the higher price points.

Overall I am still bullish but there is plenty that still needs to be established by the market.

How does something dip more than 100%? I'm lost

[shaner1]

Rising Stars Challenge 1 about to expire...just in case anyone is sleeping on it...

[rubendn]

Originally Posted by colbycolbycolby

They've made 4 million moments in the past 6 months? So you're looking at 8 million cards in the first year. Curious what the print run is on ALL Panini products in one year. Anybody?

A lot more but 90%+ of all cards made by Panini in each year are pretty much worthless commons.

The same thing is going to happen to common moments. They will all be listed at $1 (because they can't be listed for less) but in reality a lot of them will be worthless because there won't be any liquidity even at $1.

[PokeyAndG]

digital collectibles? c'mon i want the real thing

[GeechQuest]

Originally Posted by colbycolbycolby

They've made 4 million moments in the past 6 months? So you're looking at 8 million cards in the first year. Curious what the print run is on ALL Panini products in one year. Anybody?

Well a Panini case run is ~2500 cases.

Let’s say 30 products x 2500 cases = 75,000

12 boxes in a typical case so 75,000 x 12 = 900,000

Let’s just call it 1M boxes produced a year. If each box had 1 card, that’s the PR.

Rudimentary math, but you get the idea...

[cardfund]

Originally Posted by ronaldkosh

How does something dip more than 100%? I'm lost

You are right, my formula was incorrect, amateur on my behalf . My apologies, amended;

[CKB]

The Verge coverage on Top Shot:
https://www.theverge.com/22348858/nb...ot-dapper-labs

[whodatbeastly16]

Was looking at the Zion's and didn't realize they ever made a moment with this long of a play. Pretty cool that it has both the block and the dunk.
https://nbatopshot.com/listings/p2p/...c-f6f38eb4c973

[b2k1121]

Originally Posted by CKB

The Verge coverage on Top Shot:
https://www.theverge.com/22348858/nb...ot-dapper-labs

Lol that article links to this thread.

[NeedChapmans]

Originally Posted by glen87

Originally Posted by b2k1121

Lol that article links to this thread.

Well done Glen!

[ronaldkosh]

Originally Posted by cardfund

You are right, my formula was incorrect, amateur on my behalf . My apologies, amended;

No problem! I appreciate all the free insight - I know it takes time to put this kind of data together.

[Vinny1984]

Originally Posted by b2k1121

Lol that article links to this thread.

This is gold.

[ThePackLife]

I believe in the TS platform and that it has a chance at success and longevity. I also believe some of these moments will be worth $1 at some point. Im not actively researching NFTs but most of the really expensive ones are either one of’s or super short printed(minted) on TS we have 15,000 Bismack Biyambo’s. Im genuinely curious to see what prices will look like a month from now.

[ronaldkosh]

I think a good comparison to TopShot commons would be the less desirable post-2001 Etopps releases.

The print runs on the Etopps were actually a lot lower, and many of those only go for 25 cents.

Is there really no way to transact a moment for under $1?

[mcgee2134]

So the total market cap dropped a third in the last month?
Is that correct?

[rebbrooks]

Is their NBA license exclusive? Upper Deck will be doing something soon. They've applied for NFT and digital token trademarks.

[jcardstore]

Originally Posted by rebbrooks

Is their NBA license exclusive? Upper Deck will be doing something soon. They've applied for NFT and digital token trademarks.

My guess is no but that's speculation. Nobody knows.

Theoretically, the NBA wants to make as much as possible from licensing so no reason to make it exclusive.