Ever open a pack and pull a Moment or two from a team or player that isn’t your cup of tea??
Fear not: We’re excited to preview a new feature to further provide utility for all of your Moments (especially those that just don’t float your boat). We will be adding a new feature to the Top Shot ecosystem in the next few months that’ll make collecting even more compelling and dynamic long term.
Introducing: Trade Tickets
As we’ve hinted in the past, we’ve been developing an avenue for collectors to trade-in Moments for something new: Trade Tickets. Each Moment will be worth exactly one Trade Ticket, and collectors will be able to use Trade Tickets to acquire exclusive packs that are only available with Trade Tickets.
Whether it’s a common, rare, or legendary Moment from your collection, all will be exchangeable for a single identical Trade Ticket. Whether you received the Moment in a pack, or purchased it on the Marketplace, all will be exchangeable for a single identical Trade Ticket. Trading in your Moments will be the only way to obtain Trade Tickets as they will not be sold by us nor transferable between collectors.
We believe these Trade Tickets will be a fun addition to the community and the use cases are quite expansive long term. In the short term, this feature will help us solve one of the most common questions from the community…
Series 1 Reserve Packs - Available with Trade Tickets
One of the most frequently asked questions we’ve discussed over the past few months is how we will handle the fair distribution of Series 1 Base Set Moments that remain from the early days of the NBA Top Shot beta.
These Series 1 Base Set Moments sit in our proverbial warehouse. The plan has always been to distribute them throughout our community in a responsible manner. What better way to kick off the Trade Ticket system than using it to share a piece of our history with our collectors?
We’ll have just over 10,000 Series 1 Reserve packs loaded with coveted Moments from early in our beta that we are eager to make available to the community. About 70% of them will be distributed via new Trade Ticket queues, with the rest being reserved for future promotion. We will start rolling out these packs for distribution in the next few months and expect to complete distribution of all of these Series 1 Moments by the end of November, 2022.
There will be Trade Ticket-only pack drops that will function similarly to current pack drops. Hopeful collectors with enough requisite Trade Tickets in their account will gather in a waiting room and get randomly placed in a queue. For these queues, you will only be able to acquire packs with Trade Tickets. To repeat, you will not be able to use Dapper Balance or credit cards to purchase packs from Trade Ticket queues.
To mitigate the impact of introducing many highly sought-after Series 1 Moments into the economy, we’ve opted to spread this process out over ~18 months.
Each of these Series 1 Reserve packs will contain one Series 1 Base Set Moment with an Edition Size of 1,000, as well as three additional Series 1 Base Set Moments with Edition Sizes of anywhere from 1,240 to 3,999.
Some of these packs will be set aside for promotional purposes, such as contests and giveaways.
Acquiring Other Packs with Trade Tickets
In addition to purchasing Series 1 Reserve packs with Trade Tickets, collectors will have the opportunity to acquire packs comprised of recycled Moments that other collectors had traded in previously.
This will allow collectors to redeem their Trade Tickets for something in the Trade Ticket Queues, even if they miss out on the marquee items that collectors are pursuing
We anticipate that Series 1 Reserve packs will require a significant number of Trade Tickets (we haven’t yet settled on the number for the first Reserve Pack drop), while the packs comprised of recycled Moments that other collectors traded in for tickets will require significantly less Trade Tickets.
Where Did These Moments Come From?
Many of the Series 1 Base Set Moments that remain in our possession are there because of our policy of retiring plays when a new one from that same player is added to the Base Set. You’ve seen a form of this principle in action in Series 2 as well.
This process is seamless now but that wasn’t the case with our initial batch of Moments back in the early days of our beta. We committed to an initial mint run of 1,000 for Series 1 Base Set Moments but they didn’t all reach circulation prior to subsequent Moments arriving to replace them. The reason for that is because in Series 1 we never had two different plays from the same player available in the same Base Set pack, and we didn't have systems in place to allow us to pre-mint Moments before making them available in packs.
For example, Derrick Rose's Series 1 Base Moment from Dec. 9, 2019 was minted to 1,000 but only 437 of them made it to circulation. That's because we released his From the Top assist from January 24th. This January 24th Moment replaced the Dec. 9 Moment in pack drops, leaving 563 of Rose's December 9th Moments unreleased.
The orphaned Moments, including 563 mints of Rose’s Series 1 jump shot, were set aside and reserved as we put together the best ways to distribute them.
An additional swath of Series 1 Base Moments remain in our possession for a different reason altogether: because they didn’t reach circulation prior to the official dawn of Series 2. While we initially planned to distribute these remaining Series 1 Moments alongside Series 2, our plans changed based on feedback from partners and the community.
