Part 1, discussing the first day of the release can be found here.

Part 2, discussing the experience with the market and WAXP currency can be found here.

I have really enjoyed my experience after the original debacle, something that I never expected to be the case. I only own a handful of cards right now, as explained in the previous post, but its like a stock portfolio at this point. Given that I am holding and sitting on my investment, its worth while to figure out how I feel about the stakes here. Does this become a big deal like Top Shot has become, or does it settle in as another avenue to collect as a niche offering from Topps Digital? Honestly, I think this can go a number of ways, including some amazing potential for Topps that I dont think we have seen since Star Wars Card Trader took off in 2015.

Where Things Stand Now

As discussed in the previous posts, very specific parts of the NFT marketplace have a trend arrow pointing straight up. There are a few factors on why this is happening, but it stems from three major things. First, the currency is FINALLY getting injected into the buying public’s wallets, and that has given people a lot of reason to finally make some purchases. Not only does this increase the cost of WAXP, used to buy all the cards on the hubs, but it has led to the first rebound in daily buyers since the market opened.

Secondly, the market prices have a lot of data for most of the readily available cards. Base card sales now have a few hundred transactions to showcase a trendline worthy of review, and even the rarer cards have established market pricing that is substantiated by a few sales. This leads to a lot more confidence in buying the individual cards, and in some cases, sets expectations that these are worthy of the value they hold.

Lastly, the price of the packs has increased by a considerable margin. Just a day ago, premium packs were running 500 bucks give or take. Today they are approaching 700. Just a crazy increase there, which means that people who are keeping track are also extrapolating that value to mean the cards inside must be worth more as well.

As things continue to progress, daily sales volume seems to be on a rebound, but there are still far more sellers than buyers. There are also many more people holding, so the desirable cards have less volume available. Less supply and more demand means prices spike.

Factors Preventing REAL Progress

There are a number of things that are hurdles standing in the way of the market truly taking off. Significant enough that the limitation is creating a barrier to entry for new buyers, and creating hold situations for existing users – above and beyond where they should be.

Information is the key missing factor here, as so much speculation and secondary market movement has been deflated by lack of communication from the Topps Digital team. Are more packs coming? When are more packs coming? What will those packs contain? What should we expect for other Topps brands? Will there be more sports added to the pool? Because the product is so new, and Topps has done such a poor job educating the public to spur more futures type action, things have become stunted. Pretty shocking that this could be more accelerated than it is, because its already driving so many high sales.

Another key factor is supply. There are a finite number of collectibles able to be transacted, and the lack of ongoing content has put certain cards into hyper drive. On the flip side, the main thing that drives a collectible market is available options, there isnt enough to sustain the lower tier of the eco system. As a result, things that should be more valuable, just arent. People are focusing on the limited supply of Trout, Tatis and Acuna, and leaving the base cards of lower tier players to be traded at very low prices. Obviously this will change, but right now, this is a limiting factor. As more sets are released, or more drops hit the market, the values will fluctuate.

The last limiting factor is currency/platform. The entire market is based on a crypto currency that doesnt have the reach that some had hoped. The organizational aspects of large collections and reporting is similarly problematic, all driven by the choice of platform. Its hard to really aggregate your personal collection in the same way that it is easy to aggregate the entire market.

I would add that all the issues driving the starvation of the buying market for available currency is also an issue, but that seems to be resolving itself as the time progresses.

What Does the Future Hold?

Thanks to the transparency of the marketplace, we can see that Topps walked away with a pretty large sum of money from this launch. Similarly, the announcement of the SPAC acquisition that specifically called out the NFT potential means that this is not a one and done release. There is more coming, likely lots more.

I still expect more Series 1 Baseball to hit the market. Not only will it add volume, but also some content that may not have been available in the original drop. New subsets, new parallels, who knows? Im guessing all of it. Not only that, but Topps releases 40 baseball products a year, give or take. If they dont convert some of those to NFT, what are we even doing here? Definitive Baseball in NFT format – yes please!

Similar to the available sets to convert, there are many other brands to bring to the platform, most notably Star Wars. I think an NFT based Star Wars collectible would almost be bigger than baseball. Given the history Topps Digital has with the brand, I think its a no brainer. I would be a homer for WWE, but I think that’s a last resort, if its even possible with the way the company has already dove into NFTs for Wrestlemania weekend.

As for the current cards, drop 1 cards will continue to be desirable over all other readily available Topps NFTs. People always gravitate to the first in a series, and even if they do another drop of Series 1, the original mint numbers will carry a hefty premium. There may eventually be 25,000 Mike Trout NFT series 1 base cards, but only the first 2500 will have that claim to being the first in the series. Think similar to the way Magic and Pokemon cards have been valued.

I also believe that we may start to see crossover with the physical products, at least we would if Topps could sort a way to blur the lines between the NFT and Physical world. They were moderately successful with it for the Topps apps in the past, but I think it was a huge missed opportunity to not go deeper. Topps has always said the divisions were separate, coming from different budgets and different teams. I think that is a horrible approach, and I think the more partnership between the divisions the better. With trading cards exploding across the entire hobby, why wouldnt you take advantage?

To close this out, Topps Digital took their original golden goose and made so many questionable judgement calls that it broke the potential of the apps almost completely. Even though we saw 30 million in revenue for the recent shareholder report, projected to be 51 million by 2021, they could have had that and more with better management of their initiatives and objectives. I hope the NFTs take off, and as a long time collector, I always love seeing new avenues to collect.

Part 1, discussing the first day of the release can be found here.

The release of Topps NFT Baseball is a new chapter for the hobby, even though it isnt the first NFT based collectible released in sports. It isnt the first blockchain based trading card either, as Panini has had those for a while. The main thing here is that this is the first crypto-currency backed full sports card release, and I have been fascinated by the entire thing. To be honest, I never expected to be engaged at all, but the intrigue was too much to sit on the sidelines. I wrote about my experience with the initial release, here is what has happened since then.

Understanding the Currency

Unlike regular cards or even Topps Digital’s app based cards, these cards are DESIGNED to be bought and sold with ease. Well, that is, if you can find a way to get your hands on the crypto WAXP tokens that drive the sales of the cards. If you cant or wont get into the game, there are ways in through eBay, but the listings have shown to be with a premium attached. Eventually you will have to gain access through the currency, and that’s where this is going to lose a few people.

Being that I was in originally with a credit card to buy the packs, this step was already taken care of for me. Others, from what I have been reading on the forums and blogs, werent so lucky. They were either shut out of the packs, or they were unable to get a currency broker to work for them to transfer funds. It has created a huge barrier to entry in the market, one that will need some work for both Topps and WAX to overcome.

The second part I had to figure out was that the exchange rate of WAX to USD was a volatile measure, and always changing. Around the 24 hour post release mark, many cryptos decreased in value outside of their place in this release. This meant the WAX exchange rate became VERY favorable for many of the people who were waiting to buy in. Instead of paying .20 cents per 1 WAX, they were able to get it at as low as .13 per 1 WAX. Not only did this almost double their buying power, it changed the way people started behaving in buying the cards on the official market.

Eventually the exchange rate settled a bit, but I realized that it was important to use WAXP value as the standard for my buying early on. Using the volatile rate to determine how to engage with sales just became too difficult. I figured it would be easier to understand value if WAX became the standard.

The First Days on the Marketplace

Ill start by saying, the way the market functions in the NFT space is what drew me to stay engaged. Because every transaction is visible on the blockchain, its easy to aggregate the information. Websites like Cryptoslam.io give a number of options to see and track sales, as well as showcase the size of the overall market.

In the past, Topps Digital has been insanely secretive of their stats for each app they already run. Things like Daily Average Users and user stats are hidden, instead governed by guesswork and a thing called “collection score” which does little to showcase where each user stands as part of the whole community. I have said on a number of occasions that Topps Digital is missing the one thing that could take their apps to the next level – major tracking of competition. With the release of the NFT, all that information becomes readily available.

Taking a step back to the beginning, the entire marketplace started exceptionally hot, and it paid to get your cards listed first and frequently. After about 24 hours, things had dropped almost to 30% of where they started, somewhat driven by the lack of currency available, and the number of buyers who were willing to get in early. Now, almost a week later, the problems persist, and it shows in the fact that daily sellers outnumber daily buyers almost 2 to 1. Similarly, there are only about 9000 users that have bought something overall, with daily transactions slowing down to about 25k. Part of this can be expected with the fact that there has only been one release, but its clear that the value of certain parts of the set hasnt been on a growth trajectory.

Being that I had some experience with Baseball cards, I knew that value was going to be entirely dependent on one thing – how big of a deal the player is. If you are Mike Trout, there is no such thing as a bad investment in the physical cards, and that was obviously going to be the case in the NFT world. I knew there would be a strategy with players like Trout that was inevitably going to take over, so I tried to get in as quickly as possible.

Sales charts became my lifeblood, checking them multiple times per day, trying to get a handle on where things were going. Like the Topps Digital app marketplaces, the 24/7 nature of the sales process became a huge factor on deals. I found out that it was easy to make a mistake when listing a card, so I sold off a few big cards of no-name players and started watching the fresh listings come in. I was able to score a number of cards at half price, as people likely listed with a finger in the wind instead of checking the readily available data.

Wheeling and Dealing

My strategy was simple. Get enough WAXP to pull out my initial investment of 120 dollars from selling my junk. I had about 75 cards to start, and ended up selling most of them. This left me with about 4000 WAX to play with, as well as copies of the Trout, Tatis, and Acuna I pulled and decided to hold.

Because I was buying during the first major dip, the prices I was seeing made it very easy to get nice players and nice cards for nothing. Additionally, using my new listing trick, I made about 1000 WAX just picking undervalued cards off the new listing, and relisting them for the right price.

By the end of the third day, I ended up with quite a haul. I focused the ENTIRETY of my buying energy on Trout and Tatis, with some lucky Acuna and Soto purchases sprinkled in. All Trout cards spiked almost immediately once the market bounced back, giving me triple returns on my held cards in less than 72 hours. The rainbow rare Trout went from the 750 WAX I bought it for to settling around 2500. The Tatis rainbow I bought for 50 WAX settled over 400.

It was fun to see things settle the way I expected, and I felt like a Swami being able to call the trends before they started. In terms of value today, my zero dollar investment is now worth over 1200 dollars. In the grand scheme of things from people paying 5 figures for big cards, 1200 dollars isnt much, but it was fun.

Navigating Value of Certain Market Aspects

I found out there were a few things that migrated over from NBA Top Shot to create value in every area of the release. The main thing is that the lower mint numbers garnered higher prices. If someone posted a Mint #1 for sale, it would normally garner 300x the price a higher mint would go for. In fact, the top sale of the last week has been the Mike Trout Chrome 1986 signature, which sold for 80k at Mint #1.

Jersey number mints also create huge sales numbers, as well as huge misses. Huge sales for the sellers who pull them and list them appropriately, and huge misses for people who just didnt get the memo. The

There is also growing value in the unopened packs, something I knew was going to happen, but couldnt bear to wait on. The premium packs started on the secondary market at 300 dollars, dipped to 250, and then started climbing exponentially. At the time of this article, they are frequently selling over 600. As fewer packs remain sealed, these numbers will only go up.

Here is the price chart for Premium packs, 62% of which have been opened. As that percentage climbs, the price will too.

Additionally, as more of the rare and desirable cards go into hold mode, the prices on available copies will increase. Garbage players have already started selling at 2x-3x where they were during the original dip, with exaggerated sales on the cards that are /76 and below.

Most importantly the big four continue to drive the growth in the marketplace. Even though total sales value has dropped significantly, numbers on the big four guys has done nothing but increase. Trout, Tatis, Acuna and Soto have gone bananas, especially the rare versions of their cards. Low mints for each can be in the four figure range for USD, and Trout is all but the entire top sales list.

Here is the Tatis Uncommon sales chart, you can see the way these sales have gone as available volume drops:

Rookies honestly havent caught on the way they drive things in the physical world, even though Alec Bohm and Jo Adell have seen some nice bumps since the original dips. If I was a guessing man, I would say this could be one of the first areas to change. I have a stash of both.

Overall Thoughts

I was not expecting to be as engaged as I am at this point, but the whole thing is addicting. As Topps releases more cards, whether another drop of series 1 or a new product, I hope they figure out the bugs. I would hope that a queue line would be established for pack sales, or at least a better way to distribute the traffic.

In terms of the market, the NFT market remains pretty predictable. Cards and packs that are desirable now, will only be more desirable as the entire things continues. If you are waiting to get in, these cards are not going to snap back to nothing, unless there is a Black Swan event.

Topps’ entire acquisition that spurred this release may have done so in an earlier fashion than expected, but its clear that there is a lot coming in this space. Obviously, there are a high number of physical collectors that wont get it, or dont want to risk it, but it will be something that continues to grow. Based on sales, Topps walked away with 3 million here, despite all the issues. The market is moving. Its only a matter of time before Panini and Upper Deck dive in as well.

If you dont feel like this is a big deal or something worth your time, I understand. Digital collectibles doesnt resonate with everyone who has lived on physical cards for decades. I must say, I am eager to see what is coming next.

A brave new world was opened to the public yesterday, and after years of playing along with Topps Digital in their apps, I felt I had to give it a try. Originally, I wasnt going to participate, as I expected the feeding frenzy to be too evident to want to brave the enormous traffic. As the countdown got closer, I felt it was worth chasing down a few packs to experiment. Ill say that my expectations were low going in, and in some areas those expectations were warranted. In others, I ended up having a lot more fun than I expected.

Buying Packs – A Complete Disaster (12pm-1pm CT)

Here is where I think my user experience was about as bad as it could get. When the original drop was supposed to take place, traffic on the site crashed the interface. I honestly do not understand how anyone could expect there to be anything less than a hoard of people rumbling for the hottest thing to hit the market in years. NFTs are quickly becoming the world’s most expensive form of collectible, and Topps should be ashamed that they didnt work with the platform to get this set up more adequately. It was a complete train wreck, and everyone who hated the queue room for Top Shot packs likely laughed hysterically at how poorly the experience with this release went down.

Somehow, after waiting for the drop delay, and then constantly refreshing, I was able to get 1 premium pack and 5 standard packs. My total cost for everything was about 125 bucks. Because of the enormous traffic, and my lack of familiarity with the NFT releases, I was a bit shell shocked by the whole thing – especially because I wasnt sure if my transaction went through. Others around the community detailed how frustrating this whole experience was, even more so when they were eventually shut out and refunded the money because packs were oversold.

Collectors were reporting that transactions were going through on their credit cards, even though they were getting errors on the screen. Most were refunded if there were no packs to be sold, while others saw giant charges stick because they didnt know they were buying multiple groups of packs.

If I was one of those people shut out, not only would I be upset, but I would have been done. It wouldnt be worth the added effort to chase down packs and cards if I knew that my original investment was basically cancelled. Hopefully Topps Digital offers some sort of make good.

Cool Down Period – Pack Market Opens (1pm to 4pm)

I wasnt aware that you couldnt open the packs immediately after they were delivered to your crypto wallet, so I started messing around with Atomic Hub and the Wax platform features. First, getting money into your wallet to buy cards from the market is a long process. You have to provide a ton of information, it has to be reviewed before your payment loads the money into your wallet for access, and for some, the platform to buy WAX currency isnt available in their area. This isnt BitCoin, which seems to be more universally accepted and easier to access, its a specific currency called WAXP, which is how the cards are bought and sold.

Although you buy packs with credit card, you buy the resales of the card with WAXP. Exchange rates are 1 WAX = ~.23 cents. During the timeframe where packs were sold out but not able to be opened, the packs themselves could be bought and sold. Most packs were running from $200 to $300 on the premium side and $30 on the standard. I found out later why it was vital to focus on the premium packs and basically just forget about the standard.

Opening the Packs (4pm)

After the traffic died down and the packs were delivered to my wallet, I was able to open everything during the designated time after 4pm CT. The pack opening was clunky and slow, likely because of more increased traffic, and a lot of issues with loading images and delivering pack contents to the wallets. Considering how advanced Topps Digital has gotten the pack opening experience to be on their apps, I was quite disappointed that it was as weirdly presented as it was.

I opened the standard packs first, which yielded 6 NFT cards per pack, usually 5 commons and 1 gold uncommon. There were chances at Epic cards, but I didnt pull any. At this point, I had zero frame of reference, so it was just hoping to get a Trout or some other good player. I was lucky in pulling a base Trout, a base Tatis, and a few other nice RCs, but that was about it. Turns out that the Trout base is worth more than a lot of the higher level stuff from other lesser players.

The premium pack was much different. At 100 dollars MSRP, it guaranteed 45 NFT cards, including chances at all the chases. I pulled 2 cards that had 70 copies minted, a 1986 insert that was set originally at 170 copies minted, and 6 Rares, which have a rainbow look to them. Unfortunately, I didnt pull any of the crazy rare stuff, but I knew I had at least my money back just from seeing the players I got.

Pack Contents – The Confusion Begins (4:30pm)

The parallel structure from a visual perspective seems really easy to follow. The more animated the cards are, the better they are. There are signature versions of some of the base cards, and rare parallels that can get down to 1/1 if you are lucky enough to pull them. With people able to buy 10 premium packs at a time, I hope those people ended up getting more lucky than I did.

Here is where things get confusing. Each card is numbered with a mint. Basically, if there are 2600 base cards from the set minted, each card has a corresponding serial number that ties the NFT to a specific hosted collectible. For some of the rare epic and legendary, it seems like they will only have the number of mints that are present in this first drop. For the stars parallel its 76, for 70th anniversary parallel its 70, and for the 1986 holo signatures, its like 13, down to the platinum 1/1s. Everything else looks like there are more drops that will add minted copies to these cards.

You can see from the pictures below, why I think this is the case:

Basically, if you are ripping the standard packs and hoping for cards that will be worth holding onto, there isnt much there that will be that. All of the good cards are in the premium packs, and that’s just a reality people are going to have to deal with.

The Card Market Opens (4pm)

Once packs started being opened, the Atomic Hub market immediately was flooded with people selling the cards that had made it into their wallets. For those few with WAXP to spend, prices were insane. Some of the rarities had been sold in the 5 figure range right off the bat, while some of the not rare stuff was still getting to $100 and over.

I decided to take my time, but I quickly realized that was a mistake. Because there was so little currency floating around, the were only a handful of buyers and a deluge of sellers. You cant just buy this stuff on a credit card or debit card, collectors need to buy the currency and use the currency to buy the cards. With the process being so involved, most people had a ton of cards to sell but nothing to buy with.

I ended up trying to list a few cards. After I listed 3 I got an error saying I was out of RAM. For a new person in this market, I had no idea what this meant. I finally sold my first card and was able to list another. They were cheap sales, but enough that I could spend 3 dollars of WAXP to buy more RAM to list as many as I wanted.

The first few sales of the big named players were gigantic, but over time, they dropped. Atomic Hub gives you a value for your wallet and that number was ever changing. Because sales on the market are 100% transparent if you know where to look, it was easy to see where people were selling their goods.

The Race to the Bottom (8-12am)

Once the Simplex transactions started going through for people, the sales started becoming more regular. By this point, I had gathered a few pieces of information.

1. I was done wasting my time with players not named Trout, Acuna and Tatis.
2. The lower the mint number the better the value of the card. Number 1 mints were selling for 4 figures. Jersey number mints are also a premium.
3. If you had a higher mint, you had to be the lowest price on the market to sell your card.
4. You had to constantly adjust your listings to make sure your pricing was reflective of the market.
5. Buying cards listed with the wrong price by mistake and selling them at the correct price was a great way to make money to buy more cards.

With this information in hand, I started selling the junk and building up wax to buy the big named players, especially Trout. I was aiming to get the lowest mint number I could afford, because as more rounds are released the first set of mint numbers will be worth more than the second round. For example:

If you see mint numbers above these in future releases, you will know it wasnt part of the original drop. Historically this will mean the lower mints will be more valuable. Seems crazy, but I can almost guarantee this will be the case.

At about 9p, people started to see the downward trends of the garbage NFT cards take shape. The market started falling and it became a race to the bottom with most of the cards. I expect this to eventually level out as more currency becomes available, and as more people become more educated on the way the market works.

My Final Count

After buying and selling for about 4 hours, I ended up with about 1500 WAX plus inventory from the packs. I turned that into Trout, Trout and more Trout, plus a little bit of Tatis and Acuna. I didnt get anything likely worth holding, especially if more drops are on the way.

My best card in inventory is one of the 70th anniversary parallels I havent sold yet, and the Rare Mike Trout base. Both are in the 180 dollar range at the time of this article being posted. Overall, I have enough in my WAXP wallet to cover my original investment, plus all the cards in my inventory. If everything eventually goes to zero, I am out zero dollars. The WAXP currency will be reclaimed as soon as I figure out the cheapest way to do so.

The Future

First, I wholeheartedly believe more packs are coming. This will impact a huge part of the market. If you are a buyer on the outside looking to get in, DO NOT BUY ANYTHING WITH AN INFINITE COUNT until you see how this goes down. If you are a seller, get rid of your junk fast. If you are both, focus on the things that will remain valuable as more cards are released.

Secondly, the giant prices paid for common stuff early on should be an indicator that this market will function almost identically to the trading card secondary market that already exists. Get your stuff listed fast and sell fast if its not exceptionally rare. Again, none of these practices should be unfamiliar to people who have been a part of this hobby forever.

Lastly, I think there are legs to this type of thing, just like there were legs for Topps Digital when the apps had no ownership to the end user. It may not be insanely successful for the release of Series 1, but if they release super premium products on the NFT platform you better believe its going to be worthwhile to check those out.

Overall Experience

The lack of planning regarding pack dissemination and the lack of information about the releases of future cards on the platform wasnt good for the end user experience. The marketplace wheeling and dealing is fun if you keep it cheap. There is money to be made, that’s for sure, but I dont think its set up to be as valuable as the Top Shot moments.

Topps kind of limited themselves to a specific audience knowing that they were just basically selling NFT versions of their cards. Top Shot’s moments seem to be on a downward sales trend as well, so this bubble may already be deflating.

Hopefully this is just version 1.0 and Topps figures out a way to improve everything top to bottom.

The advancement of NFT (Non Fungible Token) technology into collecting has taken the world by storm. If you are unfamiliar with NBA Top Shot, or any of the major NFT platforms, its in your best interest to take a look at what the whole craze entails. Or, if you want a pretty hilarious shortcut, go check out this SNL skit.

Topps recently announced that on April 20th, Series 1 Baseball will be released in digital NFT collectibles for the first time ever. This comes on the heels of the announcement of their going public through SPAC, based on the success of their business and digital capabilities. Because NFTs have already become a top digital collectible format across multiple markets, it should be no surprise that cards are a logical next step. This is ESPECIALLY true after the insane success of Top Shot.

Here is the announcement from Topps.

To give a bit of background, Topps has been doing digital collectibles for almost a decade now. Topps Bunt started the digital division over at the company, and that division has gained mainstream attention for the success they have had over the last 5 years, especially with Star Wars. Per the investor presentation, they did about 30 million in business in 2019, and are projecting 51 million by the end of 2022.

Just to make sure that everyone is aware, the way Topps Digital HAS done digital collectibles is not the way they WILL do NFTs, as the digital collectibles are entertainment and do not have ownership. NFTs by nature are owned by the consumer through the blockchain.

This whole concept is likely unfamiliar and unattractive to many long time physical card collectors, but I assure you that it has a gigantic market and a larger following. Sports Cards in general have exploded over the course of the pandemic, and NFTs seem to be on the same path. Like the card market, the bubble talk seems to have crept into the conversation, especially with the NBA top shot market cap drooping a bit as the market becomes more diluted.

I get it, honestly I do. People who have collected cards for 30+ years are hard to separate the physical nature of the ownership of their collections to a digital marketplace. From a manufacturer perspective, both Topps and Panini have embraced the digital side for multiple years and much success, likely as a pre-cursor to the blockchain technology that is needed to do this right.

People are like, why would I pay for a picture of a card on my phone, when I can just buy the actual card and own it physically? The reason is simple – both have intrinsic value in the secondary market. They may be different in nature, but both have value. I would say, if anyone is lucky enough to get a pack of the Topps NFTs announced today, they will see that the value of the digital collectible will FAAAAAAR exceed that of the physical one. Hard to wrap your head around how that is possible, but the easy explanation is the supply is far smaller and the demand is huge.

As Topps outlined, there will be two flavors of packs, a 5 dollar version available in 50,000 buys, and a 100 dollar version available in around 25,000 buys. Of course, like Baseball cards there are odds to pull rare chase NFT backed digital trading cards, which I would expect will go for an absolutely insane amount of money.

Here is the thing, Topps Digital built a large audience for their apps, largely composed of non-card collectors. A lot of the traffic, especially on the Star Wars and other entertainment apps, are not from the same target market as the physical card collecting public. One of the main reasons stems from the situation many of you find yourselves in right now – there just isnt a good understanding of why something like this is and should be valuable.

As recently as last year, the argument would have had some traction. None of the cards on Panini’s or Topps’ apps are owned by the people who buy them. The apps are meant for entertainment, NOT long term collecting. The NFTs are not only entirely different in that fashion, but can be traded across many platforms, sold easily, and can be produced without the same effort as a physical card. Additionally, with the finite resources for producing trading cards at full capacity, its clear NFTs have an advantage.

Because Topps Digital already has a huge infrastructure and support mechanisms for creating digital collectibles, this whole situation just sounds like a perfect fit. Even if there is a bubble that will drown the value of these cards eventually, right now the market is immeasurably strong. These cards will sell out lightning fast, and be worth a considerable amount of money. If physical collectors are willing to have an open mind here, they would see there is a lot of fun to be had, especially when you dont have to grade a card, wait for a big buy you make to come in the mail, or just want to see something explode. All of those things are native to this platform.

There is no doubt that the last 12 months have been unlike anything we have ever seen in the history of cards. If someone had come to me and explained the contributing factors that led to this new world order, I would have laughed so hard, I would have likely hurt myself. Because of the way the discourse of the hobby has shifted, its easy to see where people usually stand on the issue. Believe it or not, there sure is a lot of complaining given the utopian circumstances right now.

Collectors are usually very apt to comment on how insane it is that new wax is selling for what it is, especially for desirable legacy products. Pre-sale for once cheap and fun products are suddenly the cost of mid range products of previous years. Sets like Topps Opening Day baseball, the entry level door on the entry level of baseball products sold out in record time for its initial go as an online release.

On the flip side of that, are the investor chats, that are led by a group of accounts directly aimed at cards becoming the new darling of the high dollar world. Because there are so many new people buying, it presents a few different situations that can be an enormous challenge to overcome. First, knowing what cards to buy is inherently complicated. Hundreds of sets, thousands of autographs, and a community that has years to decades worth of experience ahead of any new entry into the hobby. With most of these people joining for the “money making potential” instead of the usual reasons to dive in, the ease by which these people can be influenced is unheard of.

As a result, there are a number of accusations of this new boom being funded much like a pump and dump grift, led by some of the social media influencers that have a huge following. Because their instagram posts, youtube videos and facebook engagements are seen by tens of thousands of hungry investors, a single mention can send cards soaring. Without any regulation in place, it can be a breeding ground for giant conflicts of interest that would be heavily scrutinized in other industries.

Here is how it could work in theory. Lets say a primary influencer or colleague of an influencer acquires a nice card, or a series of nice cards. Things that would normally be within reason to pick up, and not some super premium example that would be desirable no matter what. The primary influencer either posts about this card on their social media, lauding how much of a hidden gem it is, or that they have made a huge investment to pick up a bunch of that item. Naturally, being a big influencer, these posts are shared all around and the lemmings head to eBay to pick them up. Within days, the cards have shot up in value, and the original individual can now sell their investment at a multiple of what they paid.

This is an oversimplified example, but there are some major red flags that are popping up all over the place. Giant deals between friends publicized to inflate value of other copies, or similarly important cards. If it happens frequently enough, and enough of the new eyes get wind of it, the original artificial pump and dump becomes lost in a sea of sharks looking to capitalize.

If we go back in time, this isnt the first time pump and dump has been widely accused a number of times, most notably on message boards in regards to Michael Jordan cards. Many users of these sites devised that a small group of collectors were working together to increase the value of desirable and or rare Michael Jordan cards from the late 90s and early 2000s. Although nothing ever came of it, whenever a big sale would go down, post after post would pop up detailing the intent.

In terms of the current threads, I have seen accusations thrown around that range from small inflations to enormous conspiring groups, and all of them seem plausible, if not only because the public is behaving in such a ridiculously inconsistent manner. Not only does this spur more speculation of a bubble, but it points to other examples in financial history where similar schemes have been enacted with varying levels of success.

This situation is only further exacerbated by the burgeoning creation of investment services, run by well informed collectors who seem to have a following of people paying them for advice on which cards are the next to explode. The most recent example is the series of Jay-Z cards that were released in Topps products earlier in the 2010s. These cards went from generally inexpensive to highly coveted in a matter of weeks, spurred by influencers on Social Media talking about them non-stop.

Funny thing is, I would expect that because hobby discourse has become spread through so many platforms, there is as much hype generated by collectors just openly communicating about fun things they find as much as it is planned pump and dump schemes.

Being that I am generally disconnected, most of what I am picking up is second hand information, all considering that my main focus in this hobby is still generally unaffected by the boom. I have a feeling we will be discussing these types of situations for years to come, and I would guess the muddied waters will make things very complicated to trace. Other times, it could be easy to trace a wave back to the pebble thrown in an ocean. As I have said for 10 plus years on this blog, if there is money to be made, there will be many people who look to exploit the uninformed to make more of it.