Have NFT the potential to complement or eventually even displace trading cards?
As NFTs in the form of NBA Top Shot are making headlines these days, I would like to summarize my take on this topic. First I had to check what NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) actually are about and how they relate to sports card collecting.
A non-fungible asset refers to something of a distinct value, i.e. something unique which has no exact match — like a house. So, non-fungible tokens are cryptographic tokens which are not mutually interchangeable. This is in contrast to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin which are, like real money, fungible in nature.
Through the Blockchain technology, non-fungible tokens allow us to create digital certificates to generate unique digital assets. These tokens can then be attached to digital files and thereby provide a proof of authenticity for that digital content. This way, the digital content can be owned, sold and traded.
This technology was used by Dapper Labs to set up a blockchain-based platform officially licensed by the NBA and the NBA Players’ Association where you can buy and sell numbered versions of memorable league highlights called “Moments”. Video snapshots are graded on the basis of NFTs allowing fans to obtain an idea of the overall scarcity of the specific video snapshot as well as giving them a proof of authenticity and ownership over the “asset.”
When I heard about NBA Top Shot for the first time, my initial reaction was: Why would anyone want to own digital art if it can be copied any number of times and thus be consumed by everyone else, too? Then I found an article which explained to me that due to this novel technology, content actually gets to be both scarce and abundant at the same time (https://www.one37pm.com/grind/money/guide-to-nfts).
Let’s use the above picture of Shaquille O’Neal I took at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. as an analogy. I took the picture but still don’t claim ownership of the portrait. In fact the more people share their pics of this portrait the more cultural relevance the original portrait gathers and the better for the actual owner.
Following social media reports, there has been a monstrous rise of popularity for NBA Top Shot Moments with snapshots having been sold for large amounts of money, recently. Some people claim that NBA Top Shot is the natural extension of trading cards featuring all its advantages without any of the inconveniences like condition sensitivity or space wastage.
Even though I understand the concept behind NFTs and comprehend how it can transform digital content into scarce collectibles, NBA Top Shot is still nothing I am interested in, yet. But on the other hand, social media was also something I wasn’t interested in for a long time and recently have discovered its value for me and actually started to enjoy it a lot. So for now and the foreseeable future I will stick to something tangible like trading cards but I won’t exclude that someday NFTs might be something I could also enjoy.
