🔥 The Return Of Profitable Pack Drops?
Featuring Legendary drops, Sorare Playoffs, and a 100 ETH Mistake.
Editor’s Note: We are not currently able to embed Tweets in Substack, as Twitter has recently taken issue with their attempt to build a social network (yes, this is Elon being Elon). You can read more on it here.
For the time being, I’ve instead just taken a screenshot of each tweet and attached the URL to each image - so you can just click through to see the real thing.
Good morning.
Our lead story today: The Return of Profitable Pack Drops.
Well. Not exactly.
Yesterday, Top Shot released their first packs of “Top Shot 50”, which have taken over for the classic HOLO set as the flagship legendary set of series 4.
And expectations were high!
Although the floor prices are not QUITE as high as JBB’s predictions - Luka’s floor is closer to $800, not $2000, and only 5 of the 18 legendaries are above pack price - I think it’s fair to say that most packs in the drop were within 10-20% value of the pack price ($499).
This follows a relatively successful stretch of profitable pack drops for Top Shot, dating back to the first week of March.
When I say profitable, I mean even value, as in you COULD make money on these packs, and a few people made our BIG, and where the overall risk to lose tons of the value of the purchase was low to non-existent.
To be clear: I see these as a massive positive for the platform.
Yes, it comes with some negatives, such as adding supply, which I still personally believe is the single biggest hurdle for the platform (hard to overstate this).
And yes, it invites some rent seekers to the ecosystem, although only a small percentage of packs were available to the public yesterday (the rest were gated to collectors with high scores).
But - its bringing people back to the platform. I had so many peopleI had not heard from in a while ask me about this one.
And - it’s playing the NFT game.
Regardless of long term outlook for web3, it’s impossible to deny that the current NFT movement is 99% speculation and price action.
Yes, some platforms are choosing to focus on longer term viable products (as they should), but to be relevant in today’s hype-driven world, every project needs some level of value-based excitement.
I often get the impression that the team at Dapper think of themselves and Top Shot as being “beyond” the current NFT meta, and view TS as a “collector-only” platform (as in not for profiteers).
But these types of drops - ones that many people wanted to score, wether thats to hold or to flip - signal that they still know what’s up in NFT land.
Now what does that mean for the playoffs? We’ll wait and see.
In the meantime, let’s get into all the action from this past week, starting with a little contest…
🎁 Contest Alert! Help us out on iTunes
Alright folks, we’ve got a spicy prize up for grabs here - a Luka Top Shot Debut!
All you need to do for a chance to win is Retweet the tweet below, and drop us a little review on iTunes.
Contest ends this week, so get on it!!
Every week, we recap the best low-key opportunities out there, from FREE mints to allow lists to weird/fun stuff.
On tap this week:
👑 Apply for Muhammad Ali AllowList | 30 seconds
The GOAT is coming to the blockchain! And the project is being launched by ZeBlocks, which is co-founded by our old friend and TS whale Arsonic.
🪐 Mint a Farcaster NFT for $1.50 | 30 seconds
Very random one, but still cool - Farcaster is a decentralized social network built by Dan Romero. They put out a pretty sweet AI-generated NFT for $1.50 on ETH.
⛳ Open a FREE Draft Kings PGA Pack | 30 seconds
To celebrate its launch of the PGA product, Reignmakers has a free pack available right now with NFTs that can be used towards upcoming tournaments.
🏉 Grab an AFL Starter Pack | 30 seconds
Lots of packs dropping on the AFL site right now (they are on FLOW!), and they have a $10 starter pack. Not a bad way to taste the ecosystem there.
📦 Draft a FREE Team in Sorare MLB | 2 minutes
Although you missed the start of the MLB Season, its not too late to get in on the FREE action from Sorare. And the big story here - ETH Rewards are coming soon!
🏆 Sorare NBA Reveals Playoff Plans
Well I did not expect this move.
After Sorare launched their MLB ETH Rewards this week (which I thought were a wee bit low considering their enormous rake), the assumption was that the NBA would not be far behind and ETH rewards could start for the playoffs.
I was dead wrong.
BUT! Sorare has found a nifty workaround when it comes to rewards: Store Credits.
Basically, here’s how the Sorare NBA Playoffs will work:
Each tournament lasts a calendar week
The tournament scores accumulate over the playoffs
When the playoffs end, the overall point leaders win a mix of “Credits” and prizes
The Rarer the tournament category, the more Credits the winners get
Credits can be redeemed for Prizes and Merch in the “Sorare store”
Now WHAT are those store rewards?
Glad you asked!
Now, it’s also worth noting that some of the higher tier tournament leaders win stuff beyond Store Credits, including:
NBA Store Credits
Trips to NBA Paris
Trips to NBA All-Star
This is pretty cool if you fancy yourself a big time fantasy player, and great to see Sorare roll out a playoff-long accumulative tourney. That’s different and fun!
🎟️ Candy Launching Tickets at MLB Games
I legit had no idea this was happening - but it turns out Candy Digital has been minting thousands of NFT tickets for MLB Games.
And people are buying them on the secondary marketplace!
Very very cool.
I’m still not sure what the use case will be for tickets (or if there will be one), but the fact that people want these as a straight up collectible is very cool.
In the short term, it may seem a bit bland to collect a ticket from a random game in April between average teams - but think 10-20 years down the road on this one.
I would love to have a digital stub of every game I’ve ever been to. I used to collect my ticket stubs as a young adult, but lost track of that stack over a decade ago. Problem solved!
The best part: these tickets are integrated (somewhat) into the MLB Fan App, showing direct support from the league and its tech partners.
🤦 Guy spend 100 WETH on Wrong NFT
Not sports, but hilarious/awful.
Earlier this week, OpenSea rebranded Gem to OpenSea Pro and released a genesis NFT in the process, titled “Gemesis”.
The rebrand comes in the wake of OpenSea losing ground to Blur in the marketplace wars for ETH NFTs (see below).
Although most of the trading on Blur is wash trading to earn the Blur token, it’s still not a great look for OpenSea and they needed to respond.
Enter Gemesis, an NFT that was FREE for all past users of Gem (a marketplace aggregate they acquired last year). As of this writing, Gemesis has done over $6.5M in secondary (5,553 ETH) and sits at a 0.048 floor price ($90).
In a somewhat ironic move, a trader accidentally bought a Gemesis for 100 WETH ($186k), while trying to farm the BLUR token.
Ouch.
💰 Luka Goes For $77k On Sorare
A big NBA Sorare Sale? This late in the season?
Yes, that’s correct.
Its the final week of the regular season, and Sorare is still releasing 1/1 Unique cards from the games top players (Steph recently sold for just $11k!)
Next big name up? Nikola Jokic, and likely followed by MVP-front runner Joel Embiid.
Reminder: we can’t embed tweets right now on Substack. So these are just screenshots, but they have the links built into them so just click em if you want to see the full clip.
First up - last Saturday’s insane NCAA buzzer beater. It already feels like a lifetime ago that San Diego St lost in the final to UConn!
Ok its kind of fun to have to pick a screenshot to post in here.
Look at this image below.
Yes that’s the puck on the right, and yes that’s Connor Bedard on the left.
Somehow, he scores on this play, despite having two defenders boxing him in.
This one is so good. More of a meme than a highlight.
Ok one more meme-like one before the actual memes.
**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.”
About The First Mint
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