Two weeks have passed since my last write up on Panini releasing the 2020-21 Prizm Basketball Set through NFTs. The first round was super profitable.
Summary from last update: Spent $110, received 33 NFTs. Sold 9 of them for $483. With the exception of 4 of the NFTs that I wanted to keep, the others did not sell (even though I put them in auction) because of the $5 minimum start price for auctions.
Shortly after the last article, Panini dropped Prizm Silver packs for $49 each. The packs were 2 base card NFTs and 1 silver card variant NFTs. I decided to flow with the momentum of the last drop, and I bought 20 packs ($980). I did not open these at all, at least for now. They might get opened later or I might wait until users are able to sell packs. Time will tell. What I do know is that Panini might have priced these higher than they should have. Unlike the first drop of base packs, these took several hours to sell out. Their second wave drop (which was yesterday and went through today), did NOT sell out. I am very curious at what the game plan is for the remaining packs that exist. For reference, each silver NFT is numbered out of /149. Base cards are numbered out of /1799.
Next up was the Prizm Marvel Pack drops for $15 each. 2 base cards and 1 Marvel insert. Each Marvel insert is numbered out of /500. To make things interesting, Panini released their first ‘challenge’ with this drop. If you collected a specific 10 Marvel inserts, you would be issued a Luka Doncic Marvel. This Luka NFT would be minted to the amount of complete sets made. Surely this Luke NFT would be very limited and command a high value. I purchased 20 Marvel packs and decided to start opening them to see if I could complete the set. Once complete, I would stop opening the packs and save the rest. It was not clear to anyone that there were Marvel inserts you could receive that were not part of the 10 you were looking for. 20 packs later and I had only obtained 6 of the needed 10. I decided to buy the missing 4, because again, surely this Luka NFT was going to be worth a lot. I spent $300 on the 20 packs and $139 on the missing 4 Marvel cards. My set was complete and I just had to wait for the challenge to end to receive my Luka.
Before the Luka challenge ended, the next drop was launching. Prizm High Voltage packs for $15 each. I had begun to sell the Marvel inserts that I did not need to complete the Luka set and they were selling so I felt good to continue. They released a similar challenge this time for this release. Collect 10 specific High Voltage cards and you would receive a Zion NFT. I decided to buy 30 High Voltage Packs. This time, the plan was to open up some of the packs but I was going to wait to receive the Luka NFT and see how that went.
The Luke NFT was minted and there were 307 of them. I was in shock that 307 people were able to complete the set when there were only 500 sets in total. I still do not understand how this is possible, I was disappointed, I expected the Luke to be minted to around 100~. I was no longer confident that it would get $300-$600 in auction as I was before I received it. Unfortunately, I was right. I sold mine at auction for $76. Mind you I almost spent double that on the 4 Marvel NFTs I needed to complete the set for Luka. The same Marvels that were previously selling for $30-$40 were now selling for $2-$15.
The new plan was to open up some of the High Voltage (25 of the 30 packs) and immediately sell the High Voltage insert NFTs. Clearly they were going to have the highest value while the challenge was running.
Meanwhile, Panini made a major change to their Blockchain platform. They allowed auctions to start at $1. This has allowed me to list the 150 previously unsellable base NFTs that I now have in my collection. Unfortunately, most are not selling. At the time of writing this I have around 85 base prizm NFTs that are listed in auctions unsold. This has cluttered my dashboard as I only have about 10 NFTs I actually want to keep.
In Summary, I have now spent $2,131.86 on Panini NFTs and sold $1,189.48 (money received after fees). My remaining investment at this point is $942.38 and I have around 95 NFTs, 20 unopened silver packs, and 5 unopened High Voltage packs. If the packs alone maintain their retail value when users are finally able to sell, then I am still profitable.
Unsolicited Advice to Panini
Slow down. I know you guys are printing money with these NFTs, but execution is very important. I believe you might have missed the mark with the pricing of the silver packs, but this is early and as long as you learn from your mistakes and apply those learnings to better execution, all can be recovered. Obviously you guys want this to work and are taking feedback hence your quick pivot to lower auction prices.
Here are some pain points, opportunities, and possible solutions:
- Figure out the base cards
- Perhaps you introduce ‘burning’ into the mix. Maybe a user can ‘burn’ a certain amount of base cards for a limited edition pack or low number special minted NFT. This could be a ‘challenge’ and could be team based, player based, or just wide open.
- Allow bundled auctions. Perhaps I can put multiple base cards together in an auction to ensure they sell. Topps allowed this in their Wax NFT solution.
- Remaining Silver Packs
- Have a challenge that is super obtainable or simply a giveaway of remaining packs. Zed Run executed something similar to this after poor execution of a drop. The drop giveaway benefited individuals who had spent the least. I would explain the sales and marketing benefits of this, but I will make an assumption that your team is senior enough to understand.
- Open up Pack Sales by users (you might need to figure out the silver pack fiasco first)
- More challenges
- Base challenges
- Additional challenges for Marvel and High Voltage
- You have a major opportunity with additional challenges to create some super rare (less than 50 numbered cards) or even ‘auto’ NFTs
- Additional challenges allow you to further stimulate the value of cards in this set