If you haven’t heard of NBA Top Shot, you probably live under a rock. I’ll admit, I was extremely skeptical at first. Who the hell would buy packs of virtual cards? Let me tell you, after buying my first pack, the Seeing Stars pack in the second of three pack drops, I’m a huge believer and I’m all in on NBA Top Shot.
NBA Top Shot “Seeing Stars” Experience, Pulls and ROI
NBA Top Shot Queue
The queue for the pack was long, as to be expected. I was randomly queued at around spot number 180,000 of 210,000 people in the first drop. The second drop, however, I placed around 32,000 of 180,000 people, which was enough to get me one of the approximate 61,000 packs.
The wait time wasn’t bad, with all things considered. The line kept moving at a steady pace. It was annoying that once it was your turn you had 20 minutes to buy before you were removed, however. It doesn’t seem like that long, but it is way more than necessary, which likely slowed the queue down more than it needed to be. If they can settle on a nice number, like 10 minutes, the queue will definitely be worth it.
Checkout
The common pack drop last Saturday, where everyone who was in the queue could get a pack, was a disaster. The payment was pending sometimes upwards of 10 minutes and it took forever to go through.
The Seeing Stars pack drop was much smoother, though. I was worried it would somehow glitch out and I’d be screwed out of a pack. From the time I was redirected to the time I got my pack was probably a total of under a minute. I simply clicked “get pack” and it quickly reserved it and took me to log in to my Dapper wallet account. There, I quickly hit submit on the payment and after a few seconds it was finished. I was more than happy at just how anticlimactic the pack purchasing process was.
Return on Investment for NBA Top Shot Seeing Stars Pack
This is one of the biggest parts where I was skeptical. I read everywhere about “investments” or “mystery boxes” that are really just shams. This isn’t. I’m not getting paid to say this, and trust me, I was quite the skeptic too. This is no testimonial and I am nothing special, but I could easily make around $180 off of a $14 pack investment, if the moments were flipped on the market immediately. Though, the value could continue to rise during All-Star Weekend.
I pulled a Seeing Star Chris Paul, which initially was valued around $140 minimum. I pulled a common low serial numbered James Harden that could likely sell for about $50 minimum. Lastly, I pulled a not-so-special Jae Crowder common that was going for around $5. While you aren’t going to get superstars all the time, in many packs you are guaranteed at least one moment of value. Even if I were to pull three Jae Crowder moments (which isn’t possible), I still would’ve made a dollar on the $14 pack.
Final Verdict
I am a huge sports card collector. I have over 10,000 baseball cards alone. While NBA Top Shot is currently the only one of it’s kind and is exclusive for the NBA, this is the future of trading cards. Keeping track and storing physical cards is expensive and a hassle. If you’re an avid collector like me, good luck even remembering what you have.
With NBA Top Shot, buying is easier and storage is a breeze. Unlike physical cards, I am able to sell my cards and have them automatically removed from my collection immediately. It’s much easier for both sides. People often say things like this must be “too good to be true,” but try it for yourself and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
NBA Top Shot, and it’s likely future counterparts for other professional sports, are the trading cards of the future.
