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

[Snapolit1]

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!).

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Brought to you by Steak n' Chop?

[Buythatcard]

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.

[swarmee]

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.

[CJinPA]

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!!

[D. Bergin]

Beyond the supreme significance of Williamson as the most-watched rookie of the 2019-20 season, and the compelling footage that perfectly showcases the size and power he brings to the game, this particular offering's status as number 1 in a limited edition of 192 elevates it to the pinnacle of desirability. Let's also recall that Williamson wears the number 1 on his Pelicans jersey, another cherry on top.

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.

[chalupacollects]

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???

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

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.

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.)

[AGuinness]

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.

[Casey2296]

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"

[swarmee]

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.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

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!).

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

[Schlesinj]

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

ESPN Daily Podcast about Top Shot.

[Exhibitman]

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.

[rjackson44]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

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.

Adam your funny man

[chadeast]

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!

[swarmee]

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.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

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.

Why store your cards in a vault? It appeals to someone. And aren't the Topps Bunt cars completely digital?

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