Bidding currently at $30K on a fractional share of a video clip at Heritage Auctions
 

https://sports.ha.com/itm/2020-zion-...umbnail-071515

I sure hope all the sneakerbois, bitcoin guys, and Wall Street investors cling to this new concept. At least it will spare most of us from having to deal with them. But if it can't be trimmed and put into a PSA slab, I wonder if they'll really be interested.

The Greater Fools theory has found new legs in 2020-21 COVID Quarantines.

Holy Cow.

I feel like that Heritage listing may be the precise moment the entire hobby went full Fonzi and jumped the shark.

Reading this: “The item itself is entirely virtual, exchanged through a blockchain format similar to Bitcoin in that regard but different in the sense that the traded components are valued according to their specific contents and rarity thereof. This product is effective ownership of a particular NBA play, with lower serial numbered examples considered more valuable than those with higher numbers.”

I am reminded of this speech from Billy Madison:

Mr Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.

Smells of the same old snake oil pitch ala Milken in the 80's, leveraged CDO's in 06, etc. I saw no part of the pitch that said you get residuals as owner of your virtual clip when it's played, maybe I missed something, or that might be a different pitch.

There's is so much wrong with this and the guy who's gonna get hurt most is the little guy who can't afford to lose it. Like that idiot Mayor of Miami who wants to give all city employees the option to be paid in bitcoin. Soon the pension funds will be chasing returns in these poorly concocted schemes and when they don't perform as "promised" the little guy will be left holding the bag.

That being said, I hope this is wildly popular and everybody wants so badly to get in on owning a piece of digital microfiche securely tucked away in a block chain cloud that the market for a 51B Mantle craters (I need one for my PC).

"but different in the sense that the traded components are valued according to their specific contents and rarity thereof"

Let me get this right. I can create virtual "rarity"in any amount and monetize it? This is the antithesis of rarity.

The trick is, you have to convince other people it has value. So start a cook group and Youtube channel, and watch the Dogecoin roll in.

Well, fooling Americans is as easy as it gets. Let's create a virtual Wagner 1/1 and get rich!!!

It is times when I read things like this where I think people really have to know better. Folks are screaming that this is a bubble. If people are investing in these type of things and lose their life savings, whose fault is it? Is it all of these news articles hyping the skyrocketing card prices? People have to realize if they are putting big money into these type of assets, they may lose it all, and have no one to blame but themselves.

Im buying vintage hockey 👍

This hobby has been driven to new highs by gamblers, investors, and speculators.

Some price increases are fundamentally natural and correct.

Many others are complete utter BS.

If I win the auction can I pay with e-Topps cards?

Whoa......
 

I just saved $29k...... I clicked the link and watched it for free! :)

:D

Peace, Mike

I don't understand this at all, but I'm sure almost as many people thinking paying 100k for a baseball card is as crazy as paying 100k for this.

Aaron, I just watched that moment you own ten times. Guess I owe you 300k now so please let me pay in installments
;)

Just send me a pic of some gold bullion and we’ll call it even.

Well played, sir. Well played.

I’m seriously interested because of the free shipping.:D

Yes, but will PWCC keep it in their vault?

LOL! Every time I think we're out of shame...........we find more of it. :(



https://media.giphy.com/media/8vUEXZ...Uvrs/giphy.gif

“Once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.” (Hunter S. Thompson)

I tried reading that description a half dozen times, and maybe I'm an idiot, but I still can't figure out exactly what they're selling.

Digital E-Cards............fine. Use it as a screensaver on your phone for a buck or two. I don't care.

A basketball video clip, to be traded like "Bitcoin"..................or something?

I'm sure that's a f*#king wonderful idea for a stable financial market.

Let me get this straight: this is numbered as 1/192. So are there 192 similar video clips floating around? And this one is rarer because it is simply serial numbered #1?........

Do you own the rights to the clip? Can you use it for marketing or advertising? I suppose I could see value in that.

I think we can shut the Boards down for 2021. We have a winner.

Sure, you and 191 others...

I can see 192 guys milling around a dark alley dressed in overcoats whispering "Hey, you wanna buy a basketball clip?"

No, they'll get it graded a 10 by psa eventhough it has a virus.

Selling marketing/licensing rights to a famous sports play is one thing, but who wants to own a random dunk, block, etc., from a meaningless game, for ~$35k? Wonder what liquidity there is for this item.

Here's the main blowout thread if you're interested in reading more from the beginning of the service.
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1415428

It's on the heels of the Panini Blockchain cards and Topps GPK blockchain cards, which are doing surprisingly well.
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...ght=blockchain
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...ght=blockchain

There is a chapter in one of the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books that I remember reading as a kid in which a spaceship crashes on a forested planet and the survivors form a new society in which they use leaves as their currency. And so everyone devotes all their time to gathering up bigger piles of leaves to showcase their wealth to the other members of the new society. Since leaves are so commonplace on a forested planet you have to devote an extreme amount of labor to collecting enough to enter the wealthy elite. So much so that they don’t have enough leftover for things like producing food or shelter or other necessities. So the society devolves quickly into a social order of starving people wearing rags haughtily sitting on massive piles of leaves since nobody ever thinks to question the underlying logic of their leaves based economic system.

Now that I find myself living in a society where people spend thousands of dollars on....whatever THAT is....I found that passage coming back to me for some reason.

My only problem with all of this:

Figuring out which post in this thread is my favorite.

:D:D:D

what is the difference between this and splicing the clip from youtube?

i don't get it. but I also do not get purposely created scarcity, jerseys embedded in cards, autos that I did not get in person, and 35 different color versions of the same card...... and I am a better collector for it.

Maybe I’m dumb, but I just don’t get it. I don’t want to get it, I want to forget I even saw it.

Bill

New to the hobby Wagners
 

I am selling fractional ownership in the following, fresh to the hobby, virtual T206 Wagners. 5 shares available of the Green background at $100 each, and 10 shares of the Red background Wagners at $50 each.

Why are the Green background more expensive? Simple, they are rarer, as only 5 shares exist.

PayPal, FF accepted.

Bite-coin payment sent via the google machine. I’ll take all shares of the green one!

Bill

I don't get it either.

Green Wagner has been sold out.

This is insane.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

...And people don't think we are in a card bubble.

People are getting so desperate to buy anything nowadays, including a video that ANYONE can watch anytime on YouTube.

So, on a lark I threw $200 at this TopShot, and have now purchased three video clips for a total of $20. They are completely sold out of packs at this time. And surprisingly, you can't sell packs to anyone. Some other blockchain games allow you to, and that would make it even more interesting, because once the print run sells out, you now have one of the few remaining unopened packs. The site even links you to clips where other users open packs live on Youtube, so it's not just you and the screen, it's you and your online followers watching pack openings. Kind of like Vintage Breaks, but digitally.

Looking forward to having $5,000 in my account next week from flipping...

im sitting here eating a Panini sandwich and just bought two cards on my set building checklist. I've seen 3 examples of each card, I'm sure there's more but I haven't seen them. I'm not sure I would have the same feeling of satisfaction buying an electronic bit on the come from some boiled chicken Ponzi scheme.

I'll save that for when the market opens on Tuesday morning.

I just watched $30 million worth of clips on youtube #likeaboss.

Watching is not owning.

I just downloaded $30 million in clips from youtube...

But you still aren't the chump - I mean owner - of record.

Somehow I'll manage to live with the disappointment...

This thread is the comedy I needed today. Great material, gents. I hope the Sunday show is half as good!

WTF is this garbage? Either I’m really dumb because I don’t get it or this crap is so far fetched that everyone who buys into it is dumb. Maybe that’s the point. It’s so ridiculous that I feel like I need to try out a “base” digital blah blah blah for <$20 so I can feel part of the game and not “miss out”.

Seriously though, is this like the emperor’s new clothes?

I thought I saw it all when you could buy shares of stock in a player a while back (I believe it was Arian Foster) this takes the cake. Where do we go from here. Does anyone want to buy fractional shares of athletes memories? For the low price of $4000 you too can buy a video recorded memory from Michael Jordan's Brain!

Hmm.

Pfft. It's not even 3D.

PSA won't grade the green one..its been re-colored

I have no idea if this will catch on. But I have no reason to mock it and talk about how it's the end of collecting, second coming of the apocalypse, etc., etc. It's strikes me as far fetched, but who knows. Innovation is good. I'm sure the guy of Wall Street who proposed the first mutual fund in 1924 was roundly mocked by every grey haired old trader in town who calmly announced without the slightest reservation that it was the most ludicrous thing they had ever heard of. A lot of things have struck me as asinine and worked out quite well for others. ("Why in the world would anyone want to buy a 4th floor walk up in Greenwich Village in NYC for $235,000??? Ha ha ha. That's the funniest thing I have ever heard!).

Brought to you by Steak n' Chop?

Do you realize that if you right click on the actual video and select Save Video, you will now have your own copy.

I just saved you $29,000.

Interesting thing is that these items are only supposed to be sold through the NBATopShot website and transactions off site can get your account locked. We'll see if that ends up screwing the seller and buyer of these items.

These things are similar (almost identical, really) to NFT's (non-fungible tokens). It's very interesting the hobby is moving in this direction but for anyone who is involved with cryptocurrency and the decentralized nature of value and finance, they're not surprised.

When you or your spouse purchases something on Amazon, your transactions are part of their blockchain - it's all around us. Bitcoin is not a once in a lifetime occurrence, it's once in a species occurrence. I'm not trying to be too grandiose here, it's just the fact of where value is going.

Your digital art, purchased through sites like https://opensea.io/ are more secured and authentic than many of the $10 million+ Piccaso's in the market.

It's new, it's different, but it's not very surprising... Good for the NBA Top Shots for creating a market, I applaud them!

The US Fed added 40% more $$ into circulation over the past 14 months - so dollars are worth less than 14 months ago - Gold? Nobody know the supply of gold and China, Elon Musk, etc are looking to mine asteroids that are full or gold, platinum and other so-called precious metals. Not this year or even in this decade but it will happen, ongoing projects have detailed these things.

Bitcoin? 21,000,000 coins is all there will ever be - period. Tesla, MicroStrategy and major investement firms have already added Bitcoin to their balance sheet. Rumors of Amazon and Apple in very short order.

Sorry for the long post, but besides collecting Pre War baseball cards, cryptocurrency is my other passion!!

Not to Sh*t on all the cryptocurrency economists and free-thinkers here.........but this all seems very sketchy to me. Sure, you could get dirty stinking rich if you guess right, or have an "in", but 99% of the people will get left holding the bag, as usual.

It seems like a more dangerous and alluring form of casino and lottery games to me.

Take that quote above, I lifted directly from the auction listing.

From an economic standpoint, does any of that actually mean anything? I'm open to learn. Teach me. Somebody is supposed to pay over $35,000+ with the vig (auction estimate $100,000+).

Why on earth is serial #'d clip #1, worth so much more then Clip #192? Is it really because Zion wears #1, "elevating it to the pinnacle of desirability"?

I've gotten e-mails from the Chief Treasurer of the King of Nigeria that are more convincing then that.

I assume there's a lot I'm supposed to know, outside of this auction listing, that goes unsaid, of what 1/192 ownership of this clip actually entails, and why the first share is worth more then the 192nd share (outside of it being Zions uniform number).



Sorry for the convoluted post. I feel like I'M part of the problem now. ;)

Why on earth is serial #'d clip #1, worth so much more then Clip #192? Is it really because Zion wears #1, "elevating it to the pinnacle of desirability"?

And what if he changes numbers down the road? Then what is number 1 worth???

For modern serial numbered cards, the 1/xx and the jersey numbered cards normally sell for a premium. As long as he's wearing that jersey in the clip, it will still have more value than #34 or something.
But this is the first time I've seen cards going for multipliers because they were in the first hundred or so. I'll be getting my first pack in about 45 minutes so I'll report back just how exciting it is to get one and who I pulled from the ether pack.

im more concerned how a 1989 upper deck griffey PSA 10 is now 5,000 and a 82 traded ripken is 8,000

lol

That may be the best name yet for these.

I just downloaded the Jumbo Wagner and I offer it to everyone free. There, I just saved everyone $3,000,000+

It's even graded already, so I also saved you the grading fee. Save it on several devices - thumb drive, laptop, cloud, email it to yourself, and then you can never lose it and it can never get damaged or fade (unlike those old technologies involving paper and ink.)

An auction for a fractional share of a video clip getting to these heights is hard to believe and I have NO interest in it.
But it makes me wonder - my two young boys have baseball cards, Pokemon cards, some toys and all. But they really are into and love video games.
When I was their age, I played a lot with the Kenner Star Wars figures and other toys, and it was right around the time I started to get into baseball cards. I've been back into the cards for a long while now, although not been tempted to find those toys from my childhood that I enjoyed.
These younger generations are much more attuned to digital media and I suppose this type of "collectible" could really have a market, perhaps now or perhaps in the years to come as the kids of today and recent years look to have a collection of what they are passionate about.
So very not interested myself, but each to their own.

I had a nice Sushi lunch with my 21 y old son at my office today. I punched up this thread (thank you John) and we discussed a lot of aspects surrounding this product. The discussion included what a short squeeze is, thank you GameStop, digital currency, creating demand in a market, residuals, the performance of the Apple shares I bought him when he was 3, marketing, CDO's etc. I had so much fun.

Then I pulled out a 1 of 2 known examples of an E224 Texas Tommy and said;
"I own one and one other guy owns one". And when I die you'll own one and one other guy will own one.

His reply with a wry smile? "That's cool"

So I figured I'd post my results.
This $14 pack includes four common base set moments with a print run expected to exceed 15,000 copies. It was also going to have 1 card /10,000 in an insert set called Cool Cats of which there were five possible to draw in the pack. Two weeks from now, if you collect all five of them, you get a sixth reward clip only available to those having all five pack-inserted "moments." The common moments sell for a couple bucks each unless they have interesting serial numbers.

So this pack was supposed to release at 2pm CT yesterday. Getting on site half an hour early, I kept watch because they normally have website failures during the number of accesses on the site trying to secure a pack. As the time comes to reserve a spot in line to buy one of the 50,000 packs, the website logs me out. I try to log back in a few times, with the server giving me errors. I get back in and try to get back in line. It logs me out again. (They are trying to put some countermeasures in to defeat bots from buying up all the packs) The site is crashing so bad they postpone the release half an hour.

At 2:30 the site is so buggy they push the release another half an hour, but before it gets to that, the host company buys 5,000 packs for "social media influencers" before the packs are available for purchase. They announce this in the open since NFTs on blockchains can be tracked, and going from 50,000 available packs to 45,000 before anyone can buy them reeks. They can't event handle the customer base they already have and they're still trying to press out the goodwill on social media to draw more people in. After that, they announce they're delaying the release again until 7pm CT. So I get back in line around 6:40 and they've opened up the "waiting room" early. Anyone in the waiting room at 7pm is gong to be assigned a random number to get one of the 45K remaining packs. They warn you on the site that if you refresh the screen or try to log in to get another place in line, that your first account will be logged out.

7pm rolls around and I am assigned #41K or so, so I'm guaranteed to get a pack if I stick around until up to 3 hours later when I'll be given a 15 minute slot to complete my purchase. Others got numbers close to 60K so there was a lot of demand for this pack. Luckily I don't get logged out, and at 9pm I get to buy my $14 pack and open it up. 4 commons and a DeMarcus Cousins "Cool Cats" insert /10,000 copies. However, the marketplace is turned off since they've got all the people on site still trying to buy packs. Some people in the queue were either leaving or kicked off, as about 5K extra people got packs than were originally expecting to.

Woke up this morning and noticed the Demarcus Cousins Cool Cats moving picture clip was selling for $140 on site. Listed mine for sale for $130 and it sold in about a minute. All's well that ends well? It definitely seems like a pyramid scheme. Since most of their pack offerings number in the 3-5K range, it might be very hard to keep customers happy due to the overwhelming demand for this, shockingly.

I actually signed up for the heck if it too. The experience and delays were similar.

I bought one $14 pack.

Sold a common lebron moment for 350, John Wall for $99, and a Luka Doncic for 35. Maybe I listed too low, but they were in line with other listings and there were plenty of each.

But up over $400 in a $14 pack. And I have no idea what I'm doing or selling. Or why it has any value.

You definitely beat me this round. Only got $10 in value from the other 4 clips in my pack. But 10x on a loser pack? Not too bad. More funny money to throw at the next one, presuming I have hours to stick around and am there at the right time.

Getting the Lebron obviously helped. It was common, #600 or something out of 15000. Aside from the fact that I don't really get why any of this has value, I don't get how a base moment from a $14 pack is worth a few hundred bucks. It was just him hitting a 3 pointer, and not a game winning shot or anything.

The wheels of today’s world are off the tracks in a serious way. I thought digital cards were dumb but this takes the cake for me.

Dang it! I just came across this thread, and I already spent all my disposable income buying Groupons to "Own an acre of land on Mars!"

Yeah but for every guy who was (in retrospect) wrongfully mocked for inventing mutual funds (or something similarily succesful) you've probably got 100 guys who were rightfully mocked for inventing things like futures markets for Hummel figurines or something like that.

This seems to me like something that will fall into the latter category. Mutual funds make sense. Apartments in NYC being expensive makes sense. This does not.

The whole thing raises a lot of red flags. It sells it as you "owning" an NBA play, but its not legally possible to have a property right in an intangible event like that.

Reading over their contract, what you have is a contractual right to "own" (defined in the contract in a different way from the legal definition of owning something as property) a "non-fungible tolkien" that only exists in their App. Then there is a huge amount of text containing disclaimers which absolve them of any responsibility to you, the person who buys one of those things, if things go south in any way shape or form. It also makes you give up your right to sue them in a court of law for anything they do.

So BUYER BEWARE. If this company goes bankrupt, or they just decide to shut their app down because it isn't making any money for them anymore then POOF, your non-fungible tolkien is magically worth zero and you have zero legal recourse against anyone.

https://www.nbatopshot.com/terms

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...c-6fc50878730c

ESPN Daily Podcast about Top Shot.

Isn't the point of collecting to actually have something? I mean, if this is to your taste why bother physically having cards at all? Why not just download scans of the cards you like and call it a day?

I do not see the point, other than the gambling element. But then, why not go to a regular casino instead? At least you'd get a free drink.

Agreed. I guess collecting digital stuff is collecting but like you said why not just download a bunch of stuff off the net. I know these are exclusive at first but they can easily be shared. This is just people trying to figure out new ways to separate people from their money. Nothing wrong with it I guess. I'm just shocked how many people have that much money to be separated from.

Adam your funny man

It seems that you are buying a collectible that has been licensed by the NBA. You are not getting any rights to the original video clip. So there is no way to monetize this investment, other than flipping it. My question is how many buyers are happy with their purchase and will treasure it for years to come, passing it down to their children and grandchildren, vs. how many are looking to flip it for a profit. If 95%+ of the buyers are just gambling to make a profit, that is a recipe for a total market collapse. At some point you need to have a large base of collectors who truly want to actually collect the collectible!

I can't help but think of the Beanie Babies phenomenon. Eventually, someone may be left with a virtual closet full of video clips that no one actually has any interest in owning.

"What collectors, as usual, couldn’t see was that there was a sole source for the Beanies—Ty, Inc.—and that source’s incentives were more-or-less directly opposed to the interests of investors and collectors. While Ty certainly benefited from the perception that Beanies were rare, they only profited off of the ones they actually sold (for a measly five dollars each!), and therefore were poised to make far more money by putting as many of them out into the world as possible. Eventually, the immovable object of mass delusion gave way to the irresistible force of market flooding. As more and more collectors realized that basically everyone had several of these “rare” items, they abandoned their obsession in droves, and people were all left feeling awfully stupid with their big tubs of Beanies slowly getting destroyed by mildew and moths."

EDIT: I see now that there is a big difference. The company that created the product gets a 5% cut every time the product changes hands! Wow, how devious! :)

That's a completely reasonable concern. There don't seem to be long term collectors, only flippers selling to each other at higher and higher prices, similar to the modern basketball craze going on all year. People confusing NFTs with bitcoins will be disappointed, I think.

Well all 5 of my moments sold. I have $485 in my account from the $14 pack. The site takes 5% on all sales. All of the moments are now trading much higher than what I sold then for, but I was really just doing this out of curiosity. I have not noticed any packs for sale since, which is apparently driving up demand for these moments on the marketplace.

Withdrawals are taking 30 days or more, so for now my money just sits in the account. I'm not really worried about the 14 bucks, or even the 485 in there now. But if more packs drop I will buy another and see what happens.

I just purchased your John Wall layup for $99. No, just kidding.

Its getting to the point with this type of stuff where I feel everyone else exists in the real world and I must be the one living in an alternate reality by myself.

Brian