NBA Top Shot – The New Craze
BY: ADAM MEDEIROS, @adammed0507 MARCH 8, 2021
A few weeks ago, I first learned about a website called nbatopshot.com. NBA Top Shot officially went live in October of 2020 but has seen a huge increase in popularity over the past month or 2. NBA Top Shot is a platform which is selling officially-licensed NBA player highlights called Moments. These Moments are available for purchase in 2 ways: by purchasing ‘packs’ or through a person-to-person Marketplace. Packs seem to range anywhere from $9 to $230 for a Rare pack. This feels alot like sports trading cards except there is no physical item. They’re video clips which seem to run about 15 seconds long. In addition, each Moment has a unique serial number ranging from #1 up to the total number of the same clip in circulation. Within the past couple months, a few of these Moments have sold on the Marketplace for insane amounts of money. There have been 5 Moments which have sold for $99,999 or more, with the top sale being a LeBron James dunk which sold for $208,000!
I decided to give this a shot. After visiting the Marketplace, I figured I could buy a Moment or two and check it out. Creating an account was simple as I was able to log in using my Google Account. In a few minutes, I was navigating through the person-to-person Marketplace and looking for a cheap Moment to start my collection. I’m a Celtics fan so I searched the Marketplace for Celtics players and noticed a ‘Common” Daniel Theis dunk from December 30, 2020 which was up for sale with a lowest asking price of $12. I bought it and the Moment is now part of my collection.
Purchasing a pack of Moments proved to be MUCH more difficult. Top Shot only creates a certain amount of packs available for purchase based on the rarity of the pack. There were no packs available for purchase so I signed up for email notifications which will tell me when new packs go on sale. A few days later, I received an email notifying me that a $99 ‘Premium Pack’ drop would occur in the coming days where a little less than 12,000 packs would be available. In order to fairly determine who receives a pack, Top Shot instituted a random-draw system. Anyone who joined the queue to buy a pack between approximately 11:45am and noon would be given a random place in line. Essentially, if you’re lucky, you’ll be given a random place in line and if that number is less than the total number of packs available you’ll be able to buy a pack. I joined the waiting room and was given the 113,675th place in line. No pack for me!
While it’s frustrating to not even be able to purchase a pack, I love that Top Shot doesn’t increase the supply to meet the demand. By limiting the supply of each pack, Top Shot has effectively maintained the value of these Moments as there aren’t an overwhelming amount of each one. Finding out your place in the pack drop queue line is an exciting experience all by itself. Once you get a pack, opening one to see what you get is as exciting as it gets for collectors. Next, you’ll have to decide what to do with the Moment by either holding onto it as part of your collection or putting it up on the Marketplace! Happy hunting!