Early on with the good, bad and the ugly in this release of the highly anticipated (after about a week prior to it being announced then launched) baseball has had it's version of "NBA Top Shot" and may have stumbled upon something stunning.
This set is unlike any set of cards I have seen in the 30 years I have been collecting off and on. First, there are only 2,670 total mintage of each individual common level card. Yep, not even 2,700 digitally serial numbered cards (at random after packs are opened) is as scarce a base, regular set I have ever seen. But that's just the start.
A novel "Crafting Recipe" option has made this set in short, manic. Any base card (so far only base cards) have been randomly selected each of the past two weeks since release to be redeemed then burned for a pack of a serious high end subset called "1952 Topps Redux." A set of only 12 cards that involves a trade of all five cards needed (picked at random but listed on the crafting option on the Topps link provided with WAX) to redeem for a jumbo pack, including only 4 of the Topps 1952 Redux cards. The mini redemption has been four random cards which you also need all four to redeem for a Mini Pack with two cards in the pack. There is a one week timer for this promotion, then it's over. When the bell rings the cards that were highly coveted go back to normal status as far as the market followers go, but also after 30-40%+ of the already limited versions of each card has been burned for the collectors to take advantage of the redemption.
The oddest phenomena I've noticed people are chasing the next up and coming random cards more so than some of the rarer versions. The gold or uncommon versions are mixed on the market's lowest priced cards, even though are 881 of the uncommons originally printed, and of course 2,670 of the more common cards that happened to have been included thus far as the burn/redemption offer mentioned above.
Anecdotally when I first dove into this on the secondary market (I was not wise or lucky enough to obtain original packs) so I had to chase like everyone else when they first came out. When the cards first hit the market an average card that was listed as the cheapest on the market was about 65 cents, or 3 wax and more. Then the buying started. The hoarding started and has not stopped. As of today the cheapest single card on the (buy it now) market is priced close to $4 each.
"Seven to eight X" sounds fairly stunning, although of course it's early. But packs, especially the premium packs have now crossed absurd levels of 800-1000% jumps in value on live auctions and market prices on WAX's AtomicHub. Yep, a $100 pack you bought a week ago could fetch upwards of $1,000. These numbers are starting to look like phone numbers and area codes more so than investment return numbers.
But that is not the craziest return. Again, anecdotally I was lucky enough to obtain a Yordan Alvarez base card in this set for about 20 wax early on. Just a few hours prior to this article I was able to sell it for 288 WAX due to it being one of the newest Jumbo Pack recipe crafting components for the 1952 Topps Redux packs. Since the cards that make up this recipe sell for insane amounts I chose to simply list the card rather than chase the other five needed for the 1952 redux pack and spending in the neighborhood of 1000 wax to get all of the cards. So that was about a 1400% return in WAX value on the sale of that card. Pretty stunning on a mania that is following very favorably to "NBA Top Shot" phenomena, that had a LeBron James "Moment" or digital NFT owned token sell for $13 million.
Yep, times are crazy and there are all sorts of people looking for ways to pick up collectibles and speculate on the new and up-and-coming phenomena that are NFT's, including a market stalwart that sprinted into the fray being a 69 year old standby for the collecting community. It will be interesting to say the least it's very early. If there is a Series 1 you know there will be a Series II, and maybe even more than that so stay tuned.