Over the last month, we’ve been cruising down the Road to Top Shot 50, preparing for one of the most epic Legendary Pack Drops in NBA Top Shot history.
Along the way, you’ve joined us for XL Packs, a new MGLE Drop, the Alumni Hoops Leaderboard, our Top Shot Debut Merch Drop with HOMAGE, Moment Showdown, and so much more.
You can find our Holiday, January, and February Mailbags here. In this month’s roundup, you’ll find updates about Set Rewards, Player Leaderboards, Series 1 Moments, Pack Marketplace, Moment Curation, and more. If you have any questions for April, let us know at mailbag@nbatopshot.com.
The NBA Playoffs are approaching and I don’t know what to expect. When can we expect to learn more about collecting for the Playoffs?
Our plans for the NBA Playoffs will be revealed during the NBA Play-In Tournament. We are extremely excited to share them with you.
I’m excited to compete for Player Leaderboard Rewards to earn Rare and Legendary Moments this NBA season, but curious when the Player Leaderboard Snapshots will actually happen?
Player Leaderboards are an exciting new development for Series 4 and the 2022-23 NBA season. In our February Mailbag, we defined the thresholds, mint counts, and scarcity tiers for these 28 unique Player Leaderboard Rewards Moments.
As for the snapshots regarding these Player Leaderboards:
- The All-NBA Teams, All-Defensive First Team, Defensive Player of the Year, and Most Valuable Player Leaderboard Snapshots will not be taken until at least both Top Shot 50 Legendary Packs have dropped and their respective Challenges have concluded.
- The All-Rookie First Team and Rookie of the Year Leaderboard Snapshots will not be taken until at least the Rookie Revelation Legendary Pack Drop is over and its respective Challenges have concluded.
What does this mean for you as a collector?
It is possible that winners of these awards will be announced by the NBA before Top Shot's snapshots are taken.
It is our top priority to ensure that all of the Legendary Moments from the NBA’s regular season, which will have potential Leaderboard Top Shot Score influence, are in the community’s possession before the snapshots are taken.
Details about which Player Leaderboard Moments may have Parallels included will be shared in our April 2023 Mailbag.
I locked Completed Sets before the January 5 deadline and am considering locking more Completed Sets before the May 31 deadline. Is there an update on when the remainder of my locked Set Rewards from January will be delivered?
Yes, here is a complete update for all eligible collectors.
Legendary Set Lockers have received their 3 Rare MGLE Packs, and are still in line to receive their Legendary Top Shot 50 Pack. The Legendary Top Shot 50 Packs will be delivered by the end of May, and a complete audit for eligible collectors around Priority Access to Legendary & Rare drops can be found here. Each collector eligible for Legendary Priority Access will be given their choice of Top Shot 50, Rookie Revelation, and NBA Finals Legendary Pack Drops to choose from, and an email was sent to those collectors to let them make their choices.
MGLE Set Lockers have received their 3 Rare MGLE Packs, as well as their priority access to 1 Rare Pack Drop. If you have locked multiple MGLE Sets, the outstanding rewards will be applied to the final MGLE drop.
Non-MGLE Rare, Base Set, Cool Cats, and MSFE Set Lockers have received their 1 Rare Pack and 1 of 2 Boosted Hot Packs. They are still owed 1 Boosted Hot Pack, which will come in May 2023, along with Priority Access to an upcoming LE Pack Drop, detailed below.
Other Common, Fandom, and Vintage Vibes Set Lockers have received 1 of their 2 Boosted Hot Packs. They are still owed 1 Boosted Hot Pack, which will come in May 2023, along with potential for Priority Access to at least 1 Pack Drop in Series 4, which is detailed below.
The Boosted Hot Pack Reward delivered in May will include 7 Moments, with a deep variety of players included.
LE Pack Priority and Pack Priority Access for Non-MGLE Rare, Base Set, Cool Cats, MSFE, and other Common, Fandom, and Vintage Vibes Set Lockers will be delivered this April, in the form of one free airdropped pack per eligible Set, each containing an LE Moment — instead of Priority Access to buy a LE pack.
What this means is that the collectors with eligible locked Sets will now receive a free pack airdrop in April and May, instead of a pack airdrop in May and the right to purchase a LE pack in April.
I have been saving unopened Top Shot Packs since I first started collecting. I’m excited for the Pack Marketplace that we’ve been hearing about. Is there any update around an ETA?
We have been building the Pack Marketplace during Series 4 and it will be launched in Series 4. But to be clear, Series 4 will continue into the summer and Series 5 will commence around the start of next NBA season.
One of the most important technical hurdles in bringing this feature to life is for NBA Top Shot Packs to be migrated onto the Flow blockchain. As of today, the Moments inside a Pack are on the blockchain, but the packs themselves are not “on-chain.” Bringing Packs on-chain will be a fundamental, massive, and necessary step to bring the Pack Marketplace to life, and while we’re making strong progress, we’re not quite there as of today.
As a stepping stone to the Pack Marketplace going live in Series 4, we are nearly finished with the development of Pack Gifting — which will allow collectors to bundle up to 5 Moments from their collection into a new Pack (on-chain), which can then be gifted (not sold) with a direct link to any new or existing Top Shot collector. This Pack Gifting feature will go live before the Pack Marketplace, and it is something we are excited to offer our collectors.
When Russell Westbrook was traded away from the Los Angeles Lakers, I thought it meant he would not have any more Lakers Moments this NBA season. Can you explain why Westbrook had a Lakers Challenge Reward available while he was on the LA Clippers?
Situations like this one are exceedingly uncommon, but when they happen, here is our general mindset around them: we try to avoid it where we can, but we will celebrate special achievements from players where appropriate.
We believe that Russell Westbrook entering the NBA’s top 10 in all-time assists is a Moment from NBA history worth commemorating. The timeline in which we were able to make this Moment available to our community was complicated by the trade deadline and elongated buyout process for Westbrook.
As a general rule on a related topic, when a player changes teams mid-season and they have an existing Moment that is not 100% distributed, we will typically continue to distribute those minted Moments.
Similarly, in cases where a Top Shot 50 player has an incredible Moment early in the season on one team, and later changes teams mid-season, the player’s early season Moment will remain eligible for Top Shot 50 consideration.
A blog post from April 2021 led me to believe that unreleased Series 1 Moments would be distributed in Locker Packs by the end of November 2022, but that has not happened yet. Can you provide an update on the distribution to date and why it’s behind schedule?
Yes, we’re happy to share an update, and share a link to the original blog post being referenced.
As it stands today, more than 80% of all Base Set Series 1 Moments have been released and the remaining Series 1 Moments will be released in a deflationary manner on a continuous basis.
Since introducing Locker Packs containing 4 Series 1 Moments in exchange for 350 Trade Tickets, we’ve worked with our community to refine the offering over time to make these packs a more positive collector experience. With a community vote that saw more than 4,000 collectors participate, we discontinued the initial Series 1 Locker Pack offering to make Series 1 Moments available at lower Trade Ticket thresholds.
Since then, we’ve seen popularity with our 4 Trade Tickets for 3 Moment Locker Packs, with a 1% chance at a Series 1 Base Set Moment, along with popularity in our 40 Trade Tickets for 3 Moments, with one guaranteed Series 1 Moment inside.
We plan to have consistent availability of Series 1 Base Moments through deflationary campaigns like Locker Packs for Trade Tickets – with limited interruptions – until these Moments have reached >99% distribution.
In the Series 4 Roadmap Announcement, you shared you expect approximately 5 million Moments to be burned and permanently removed from circulation during the NBA season, excluding Moments burned by collectors in Crafting Challenges. Can you please provide an update on how things are tracking?
Since the start of Series 4, there have been over 4,500,000 total Moments burned, including:
- 2.5 million Moments burned by NBA Top Shot across Series 1, 2, Summer ‘21, and Series 3 in our “Big Burn” to start the NBA season.
- The 7,962 Platinum Ice Ultimate Moments burned by NBA Top Shot in January.
- 1,305,375 Moments burned in the process of distributing Locker Packs since the start of Series 4, as of 5 PM ET on March 30, 2023.
- Over 230,000 Moments burned in the two All-Star and Alumni Hoops limited time Leaderboards introduced over the last 45 days, offering rewards and prizes in exchange for the Top Shot Score of burned Moments.
We’ve seen high levels of engagement and participation from our limited time Alumni Hoops Leaderboard, where 5,800+ collectors participated across every round and over 215,100 total Moments have been burned since mid-March, representing nearly 5% of all Moments burned in Top Shot history.
For comparison, 340,247 Moments have been burned by collectors via all Crafting and Hybrid Challenges all-time, which do not count towards our goal of burning 5 Million Moments for the year.
Excluding the Moments burned by collectors in Crafting and Hybrid Challenges, we have already exceed 4 million Moments burned during Series 4, and we are not slowing down the burning any time soon.
In the Series 4 Roadmap, you also shared that fewer than 2.79% of all Moments minted this year would be Rare. Can you provide an update on how that’s going?
When it comes to Rare Moments and their percentage of overall supply, so far in the 2022-23 season, 3.4% of NBA Moments have been Rare. We are currently pacing to finish the season below or around the 2.79% Rare threshold. This projection represents both a slow down in new Rare Moments, the first releases of upcoming Legendary Moments, and the continued distribution of previously announced and mid-release Common Moments.
We look at this promise as important, and know you do too, so let us be clear that we will not produce more Common content than we have already planned just for the sake of keeping this ratio in check.
In November 2022, Top Shot shared an overview of all of the NBA regular season’s planned Sets. Can you provide an update on unreleased Series 4 supply, and the timing of how certain Rare Moments have been released in close proximity for certain superstars.
With the completion of the recent Luka Dončić Spotlight Series Challenge, 77 of the intended 150 Spotlight Series Moments have been released. The remaining Spotlight Series Moments will be released over the course of Series 4.
As of today, 177 of a projected 270-290 Base Set Commons have been released. The remaining Base Set Moments will be released over the course of Series 4. For reference, the Series 1 Base Set had 287 Editions, the Series 2 Base Set had 533 Editions, and the Series 3 Base Set had 347 Editions.
Extra Spice and Hustle & Show were announced in our Series 4 Roadmap and are beloved, highly collectible Common Sets that preserve the fun and competitive spirit of the NBA. While these Sets have yet to be introduced so far, we have been saving and curating plays for these collections throughout the NBA season and do intend on making these Moments available in the future.
As for occasions during this season when players like Donovan Mitchell and Giannis Antetokounmpo have seen two Rare Moments from different Rare Sets released within weeks of each other, we look at curation and the greatness of a player through the lens of a complete season. Balancing their real-time performance with our evolving pack drop schedule can create instances where Moments may be released within relative proximity of each other, but in totality, collectors can expect star players to receive 1 to 4 Rare editions via packs throughout the 2022-23 season.
As this NBA season winds down, we’re extremely conscious of which players have been in the limelight so far and who is still deserving of their place in the story of the season and the collectibles that tell it.
As the NBA’s regular season winds down, what is Top Shot doing to acquire new collectors?
Growing the collector base and improving the demand side of our economy is a key focus of our team. Over the next several weeks, you can expect to see new marketing campaigns and executions focused on collector acquisition — starting this weekend at the Mint Collective Sports Collectibles Event, where we are sponsors and have a booth with multiple activations to welcome new collectors.
Recently we have been investing resources to make the early product experience more sticky and engaging, and will continue to do so. Updates like our logged in home page, for example, are critical to surface important features that improve new collector navigation and progression.
Home page updates, refreshed Starter Packs, new onboarding experiences, bug fixes, a wider mobile app release, and more are in the works as we double down and invest in this area. It’s important to ensure that the collectors who sign up have a memorable first experience that helps them both understand and fall in love with Top Shot.
Thanks for reading!
