True, but that's largely true of collectibles in general. Baseball cards weren't valuable for the cardboard they were made of, they were valuable because people liked them and wanted them and they were created with artificial scarcity. That's been true of a lot of things--diamonds definitely fit this bill, as diamonds aren't particularly rare, but the diamond industry keeps the supply scarce to keep prices high. Fiat currency is the greatest example of this, as the paper (or metal of coins) aren't worth what the currency is worth; it's valuable because everyone has agreed it's valuable. For as long as people who are interested agree that Top Shots stuff is valuable, it'll remain valuable. If people lose interest, it'll instantly lose pretty much all value.
I have a hard time with the concept of virtual collectibles. There’s something whole about a tangible object that you can feel a connection to. I get that the world is getting smaller, people are finding ways of consuming less in some aspects, but this just seems ridiculous. I used to save images of NBA players onto my hard drive just to collect them when I was in middle school and early high school. It feels like you’re now paying money for that.
There’s gonna be a few plays that will be worth a bazillion dollars if they release them. Jordan’s shot against Utah. That Shaq lob against us in the WCF game 7. Iverson crossing up Jordan. Even Dames bye bye shot would be worth a fortune.
You can still have those images and videos of players for free. It's not really the videos that are being monetized--you can still find and download those from YouTube or wherever else. What's being monetized is the stamp of "collectible" and they're attaching videos to them to mirror past collectibles. They could just use the text "Pippen dunks all over Ewing," but it looks nicer with the video.
In the waiting room for this pack drop. Find out in 20 minutes whether I get to drop $199...haha. The line is randomized, so it's just luck.
That’s why I don’t understand the value of it. I get the why for some people, for me it seems ridiculous.
Yeah, it's just another level of abstraction when it comes to collectibles. We've already imbued bits of cardboard or pieces of plastic with the "collectible" shine, how about digital bits? There is no value except for perceptual value.
You've gotta have rocks for brains to make a pet out of a rock. And is a person who keeps a pet rock even sane?
I would be relieved. You’re smarter than that. Nobody in their right mind thought selling digital pet rocks would be lucrative (or ethical). At least with pet rock you got a rock.
I would argue that, at least, theoretically, bitcoin had an intrinsic value--a currency that couldn't be tracked. Now, whether that value could be reaped by people who weren't engaged in criminal activity is another question. But you're right that the way the vast majority of people use it, it's basically like a stock without any shares behind it. Melo is a great example of an asset lacking any value beyond perceptual.
I'm watching a show on NFTs in general and they are saying that the new trend will be to fractionalize the shares of popular art by backing their own mini cryptos that people can buy and trade just like bitcoin. They will have market caps. Pretty cool stuff.
We can agree to disagree. When I watch him, I think his awful defense more than gives back what he provides on offense and advanced stats validate that, so I feel pretty confident in my opinion.
