What Is NBA Top Shot? Here's Why People Are Paying Mega Money for Highlights

The sports card market is booming. Many who love sports—and even some that don’t—have been collecting sports trading cards for years. Over the past 12 months, we have seen an explosion in the market of all sports cards with the term “Sports Cards” increasing in interest by over 100% according to Google Trends.  Check out the rise in the price of a 1986 Michael Jordan rookie card for reference.

Along with sports cards, there has been a movement towards Bitcoin, ETH, etc., as the currency of the future.  With cryptocurrency comes something called “blockchain”; to put it simply, blockchain is a database or a storage of value. One might be thinking, “How in the world does crypto/blockchain have anything to do with the sports card market?”  This is where NBA Top Shot was born. 

NBA Top Shot is an officially licensed product of the NBA, in which users can own a piece of the action known as “moments”.  A moment is an NBA highlight that has become a digital collectible and can be held onto forever. The technical term for these moments are Non-fungible tokens (NFTs).  An NFT acts as a digital certificate on the blockchain that gives the asset holder authenticity and ownership over the asset.  In NBA Top Shot’s case, this is a moment.  The tweet below gives an idea of what an NBA Top Shot moment looks like. 

A common question around the internet from speculative collectors is: “Why would I buy a highlight I can watch on Youtube?” However, a better question might be, ”Why would I buy a sports card I can print out on my computer?” The answer to this is the proof of scarcity, authenticity, and ownership gives these assets value—both digital and physical.  Each moment is assigned a set, series, tier, and serial number verifying the individuality of each moment minted.

Sales data from moments sold on the marketplace over the past month might blow your mind.  

As is my belief with crypto, it is not too late to get in. NBA Top Shot is still in beta while they continue to make improvements and increase efficiencies with processes throughout the site.  The concept of NBA Top Shot came to life in July 2019, when the NBA, NBA Players Association, and Dapper Labs got together for the joint venture.  About one year later, the concept was brought to life at nbatopshot.com. Anyone who begins to collect on NBA Top Shot will still be an extremely early collector in the new space. I personally learned about NBA Top Shot on January 15th after seeing co-founder of fantasylabs.com, Jonathan Bales, tweet out an article explaining why he purchased a $35,000 highlight of Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant posterizing Aaron Baynes.

There are currently three ways to acquire moments: buying packs, the marketplace, and completing challenges.  Buying packs is my recommendation to new users looking to start their collection.  Packs can range from $9 to as much as $999, depending on the rarity and quantity of the moments included in the pack drop. Due to the parabolic rise in NBA Top Shot popularity, it is tougher to get a pack than just going to the pack's page on the site and purchasing (although the long-term vision for the site is that $9 common packs are readily available for purchase at any time). The demand for these packs currently outweighs the supply, as the marketplace EV for a common pack is calculated at upwards of $30.

The marketplace is another avenue to take when looking to add to one’s collection.  The marketplace allows one to search by player name, team, or set.  NBA Top Shot also gives users the ability to filter by series, tier, price, serial number, position, and more.  Whether you have a certain budget to spend on your collection or you are looking only for moments from specific players, the marketplace has you covered. The interface is very user friendly and easy to navigate. 

Additional value is added to a moment when a specific moment is required as part of a challenge. A challenge is one of the best ways to receive exclusive moments that can’t be found through pack drops. To complete a challenge, a user must collect all moments of the required challenge and hold those moments until the timer runs out.  Once a user has completed the challenge, a random serial number of the challenge reward will be gifted to the user’s NBA Top Shot collection. See the image below for an example of a current ongoing challenge for a Metallic Gold Limited Edition Larry Nance Jr. Dunk.

The future is digital and NBA Top Shot hits all the key areas to provide fans, collectors, and investors with an innovative product bound for mainstream success.  The trading card industry alone is worth over $5 billion annually.  The potential for the digital collectible industry is astronomical and we’re just starting to see the growth.  Check out NBA Top Shot today and happy collecting!