Hot Pack Winter Is Here ☀️
Hot Pack Winter Is Here ☀️
Including Russ' Bench Cooking, Top Shot's New Hot Packs, Big Time Grail Sales, VIP Chat Breakdown, Sorare Swaps & More
Good Morning, B&B Squad! Happy Wednesday!
We’ve got a ton of news across Top Shot and Sorare NBA to get to, so I’ll only leave you with a quick macro NBA thought:
Russell Westbrook’s 6th man success has been hilarious to watch. Just a few weeks removed from blaming the move to the bench for his hamstring injury, Russ has since thrived in his new role — averaging 19.6 points, 4.8 rebounds and 7.6 assists. Has he found a new niche in the league?
Also, he is still unapologetically Russ, doing weird things like wiping his sweat on Colin Sexton’s hair?!?
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
Hot Packs & Sales Snacks 🔥
We’ve got our first pack drop of the new NBA season, with 55,000 ‘Hot Packs’ available via a new draw system:
Collectors can join the draw by putting a ‘hold’ on the Dapper Balance needed for the amount of packs requested (limits vary based on Collector Score), with successful entries being delivered on Thursday, Nov. 10. No waiting in the queue!
Some highlights in these packs include:
Rookie Benedict Mathurin’s Top Shot Debut (with 3,800/4,000 being released at once, a change from previous years)
Seven new Fresh Threads moments, including Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, and John Wall
I actually am a fan of the format, as well as the distribution method for this first drop. Supply is always the elephant in the room, but releasing these as blended Hot Packs at a $10 blanket cost is an improvement on many individual drops of Common, Fresh Threads, etc.
Elsewhere in the Top Shot streets, it was grail SZN — with Steve Veerman making a massive purchase of a Series 1 LeBron James #23 legendary moment for $12,999. The same moment previously sold for $78,000 in January of 2021. Yowza!
A thread on how it all went down:
Another big sale rolled in on Monday, with user MrT purchasing Ja Morant’s legendary Series 1 Top Shot Debut for $12,500.
VIP Voices Concerns 🗣
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou made an appearance in the Top Shot VIP Discord on Monday, taking questions from a concerned group of collectors.
While nothing groundbreaking came from the conversation, Roham did hit on some important topics in the community — detailed in the thread below:
Full transcript of the conversation here.
Credit to Roham for taking some heat from the community, after being largely invisible over the last few months. How I would be as the head of a company in a room of angry users:
Sorare Streets 🚥
Game Week 7 is off and running, but not before some new features and a huge Unique sale earlier this week.
Sorare announced a new card swap feature on Monday, allowing managers to exchange one common card for another of similar value, every 24 hours.
I took advantage of the new tool immediately, chucking a player who didn’t fit my team’s culture (don’t let the door hit ya on the way out!) and getting to choose from five players with similar L10 point caps:
As detailed in the previous newsletter, Sorare also ramped up the Unique auctions this weekend, in anticipation of this week’s higher tier competitions.
The Kevin Durant 1/1 auction was a spicy one, concluding Monday morning for nearly $60,000:
Community Q&A Fun 🐦
Around The First Mint 🗣
🎧 Why Tom Brady’s $200M NFT Project Is Struggling
When Tom Brady retired in February 2022, he announced that he would dedicate all his time to his new NFT platform: Autograph. Designed to sell digital collectibles of top tier athletes like Tiger Woods and Wayne Gretzky, the platform burst out of the gate amidst the NFT boom. But in the doldrums of the bear market, the platform is struggling to keep collectors happy, as promises are broken and Brady spends another season on the field. We dive into the project, its co founders, and talk directly to the community.
🎧 How Nike Plans to Double Revenue with NFTs
🎧 Why the Chicago Bulls are winning at NFTs (Feat. Luka Dukich)
🎧 Steph Curry’s Multi-Billion Dollar Future in Crypto
Thanks for reading!
Follow Zach on Twitter at @GhostOfGregOden.
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
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