How Top Shot Got Back to the Top
Tags: NBA, Nft Marketplace, Nft Collectibles, Basketball, Nft

It’s funny how the mood can swing so quickly on Top Shot. The past 2 months has felt like doom and gloom, with the latest bear run hitting the marketplace. A lot of people (myself included) were highly critical of Top Shot, the approaches they had been taking and where we were headed. NFL All Day was going to bury the platform with people supposing to exit in droves, liquidate to Dapper, 60k moments would trash value of all the other moments and the long famed rake back was just an old wives tale.

Fast forward to the end of 2021 and Top Shot is again back on the rise, with the blue chip feeling that felt so great near the big pump at the end of summer. Our bags are pumping, we can check Moment Ranks again and the future feels bright. Top Shot swings and the NBA season go hand in hand, it just depends on how early we front run the key points. Right now we should be hitting a heavy bull run coming through Christmas, into the mad hype machine that is the All-Star break. There shouldn’t be much of a lull, minus the Super Bowl hype, but I think we are strong enough to get through that then ride into the playoffs.

So how did we get back here? How did we seemingly overturn the marketplace back in what felt like a handful of days? I’ll give you 2 simple words: fun and security.

Let’s start with the fun part. Top Shot absolutely nailed Christmas Day. I’d argue they couldn’t have played it any better. The 3 tier challenges, using Christmas Day highlights; what a day that made for watching basketball and interacting with Top Shot. The swings in the marketplace with the spec buying all day long, the constant highlights that felt inevitable to be a reward moment and the feeling like this was fun again. They timed the Deck the Hoops drop and MGLE drop perfectly and without a hitch. Credit to them for putting MGLE right behind Deck the Hoops. It made 12/21 feel like a big day on the platform and if you missed out on DTH, you still had a nice consolation prize to go for with MGLE, the signature “subset” on Top Shot. You roll that excitement into the Christmas Day games, followed up with some more Challenges and we’re rolling.

I checked earlier today and there were 7 challenges you could do at one point. We have the 3 tier Christmas Day challenges, Deck The Hoops, MGLE and the 2 tier Flash Challenge for field goals made. Challenges are one of the most fun parts of Top Shot and surely with 7 going on at once, you could find one you wanted to tackle or see your account popping with all the interest going on. It’s driving engagement and constant attention, which is exactly what we need, but more importantly, it’s fun to watch the NBA and interact with Top Shot together again. The pump we saw on TS Debuts yesterday after the Flash Challenge announcement was a great old school Cool Cats spec pump. I’ve said it before, spec buying is fun and when it pays off, it pays off. Say what you want about the 60k mints, but they have been a great way to let people get in on these challenges that don’t require Evan Mobley or Desmond Bane to complete. Also, shoutout to anyone paying 2 grand for a Patty Mills rare.

What has come along with the various challenges, upcoming special drops and renewed interest is a feeling of security again. A feeling that our bag maybe isn’t as hopeless as we felt. It’s safe to spend Dapper again. We’re seeing the rise again of the Rare and what I’ll call those mid range buys from $100-$1000. Just take a look at the current MGLE set. A lot of those moments people pegged to be -EV from the pack and as of this writing the cheapest you could find is $99. We have seen steady pumps on TS Debuts, Throwdowns, Rising Stars and 2021 All Star Game sets. Maybe some of that is front running for the spring, some for the next lottery ticket on the requirement for a challenge and maybe some because they are what you just want to buy and finally feel like the bottom won’t fall out tomorrow.

Like a lot of others, I had been hesitant on buying into any moment of significance. I completed the Fresh Threads set when it dropped for the fun of it (what a great call that has been), but outside of that I was relatively slow in buying. After all, I could just get it cheaper tomorrow right? For me, something clicked when that MGLE announcement came. That is such a key pillar of Top Shot and I believed that was going to drive excitement, maybe more so than Deck the Hoops. MGLE was a reasonable priced pack with a premium product. It hasn’t ever let us down and it got me excited again. I remember having some Dapper sitting around and deciding to do a little shopping on quad badge Isaac Okoro, Desmond Bane and some other guys I felt like might have value pricing and be good holds for later in the year (bullish on the Grizz). Once we saw that jolt, that sign of life over the Christmas period, the wild west was back in the marketplace and now it was finding the best moments you wanted and the best values, because we felt BACK. The FOMO buying was coming back, floors were getting smashed and if you hesitated; you might miss out. In the last few days the Dapper is burning a hole in my digital wallet and I’ve jumped into the new Cole Anthony MGLE, Lu Dort Rising Star, re-bought the Donovan Mitchell All-Star game dunk and aped into a Jonathan Kuminga (our Top Shot group chat is a big Kuminga stan chat). It just feels good to feel good on Top Shot again.

I personally thought the 2021 All-Star Game set was going to be a lost set without any real long term value or utility, but boy was I wrong. It has turned out to be one of the best “low cost” entry points for a Rare. It’s like the rare version of Seeing Stars. What we’re seeing is a movement for people to reach a little deeper and spend a little more to buy up those rares and debuts, then hold them. Each time we have seen one of the challenges, outside of the 60k, 40k and 35k for the average players, the floor is rising each time on the moments required.

Take for example the Jayson Tatum All-Star Game moment. This was the most available rare moment he had the night the flash challenge required a rare Tatum along with the other commons and we saw the previous floor rise from 110 to roughly 140 post challenge. Toss in rake back and we went to 150 easily. Then we saw the next utility of the rares and now that Tatum ASG rare is sitting back over 200, steadily. It’s a great sign that people are holding the moments after the challenge is over and not just re-dumping everything back in the marketplace. It shows trust in the platform, it shows people looking ahead to participating in the next challenge and it shows people feeling secure like they can hold a moment and not see it depreciate. This is probably the single biggest reason I think we are headed back to a bull run. The demand is going to start to outpace supply on those non-commodity mints.

These challenges with the silver metallic reward was a brilliant move also. It almost reminds me of the Candy play of the day concept, where it is out of left field, but you get an opportunity at a shiny new moment you weren’t expecting. Or maybe it’s because NFL All Day beta has felt somewhat lackluster to be brutally honest or maybe it’s because Top Shot finally figured out ways to keep us hooked with these flash challenges, but either way, it feels like the king is back on the throne for now.

Oh and we had a shoutout in a Google commercial, but that’s probably nothing…