Digital Risk, Courtyard Marketplace, & Disney Pins
Some random topics this Sunday:
Digital Risks
Digital collectors have a higher risk tolerance on the collecting spectrum, but sometimes that can get them into trouble when a bad outcome with digital can mean you can’t access your collection in some cases.
Some questions about unappreciated risks in digital collecting include:
Platform
Can the platform your collection is on survive the company running the platform? That breaks down into some some questions:
Do you have your NFTs in a wallet that you control?
Will the blockchain still operate if the platform shuts down?
Will you still be able to buy, sell, and trade if the platform shuts down?
Will the images/videos work if the platform shuts down?
Does the blockchain the platform use have technical risks that you understand?
If it’s a public blockchain:
How’s the foundation or governing structure?
How’s the community?
Is this something easy for devs to get into or is it more niche?
If it’s a private blockchain:
What redundancies are in place in the vendor environment?
Is the solution well-supported? Does it have regular updates for system improvements and security?
What level of internal technical support and management is required for it to operate?
What is the most likely point of failure?
What are the bridge options if migration is needed?
Growth
There tends to be a core group of digital collectors that move from platform to platform. What is the company doing to grow beyond that core audience that are already bought into digital collecting?
Is the product and customer experience good enough that the existing base will be a positive force for growth?
Does the company have a competent marketing team that can generate relevant promotions with reach to bring in quality leads?
Does the company engage with the community? Does it follow through on suggestions?
Pricing & Supply
Does the sales activity on the secondary market support the price of packs?
Does the pace and composition of new releases make sense given market demand?
Do buyers of new releases feel like they are getting good value?
Are the checklists curated in such a way that star players/characters are not being oversupplied?
When there aren’t promotions that stimulate market activity, what does the baseline demand look like?
Licensing
What are the statuses of the key licenses on the platform?
Does the company have a history of bringing in new properties?
What is the status of your collectibles when licenses expire?
When licenses expire, does that impact future portability of your collections?
Does the expiration of licenses affect the ability of the company to use those collectibles in future incentives/promotions like staking, crafting/rewards, and collection scores?
Somewhat related, I was messing around with Gemini Deep Research after reading some conversation about the current status of Panini Blockchain’s solutions essentially “not being a big deal,” to get a more objective perspective.
Here’s the prompt I used:
Based on current status of the Sawtooth blockchain platform, would you recommend that as a viable option as a long-term private blockchain solution in a AWS environment?
You can read the full report below or view the highlights on this interactive report.
I am not trying to “hate” on Panini with this information but I think it’s important people are aware of the risks they are buying into because I think information coming from the company and some of their unofficial spokespeople is in my opinion skewed optimistically. As always, I suggest you do your own research before making any decisions.
Courtyard Marketplace
If you’re not quite bought into the digital collectible concept but you’re interested in a more modern collecting experience, a nice hybrid is Courtyard.io. They’ve become well-known for their vending machines, which are a multi-tiered repack product line for sports, non-sports (Pokemon primarily), and comics that come with a guaranteed instant buyback from Courtyard (not guaranteed to cover the price of your pack though).
What’s not as well known is their marketplace where you can buy vaulted items that either came from packs or that customers sent in. You can pay with crypto or cards and either keep your purchases in the blockchain-backed vault or have them shipped to you for a fee.
Some people have seemed to get some pretty good deals on offer there, but I’ve not had much luck with that so far. But I’ve been getting stuff at slightly below CardLadder values including these two below:
Digital Disney Pins
Disney Pinnacle has been heating up the last month. The digital pin collectibles are on Dapper’s platform and have been having pop-up marketplace events while they are still in beta. One is going on still as of this writing.
Jumping in can be a little confusing due to the different editions and how things are structured, but Disney has a good write-up on marketplace basics that covers some of the key elements of these pins.
The pins are NFTs, but they don’t emphasize that for what I would assume are adoption reasons. You don’t have full self-custody, but these are stored in your Dapper wallet.
The data available on the site is a bit limited, so if you’re looking at buying I would suggest checking out one of the third-party market aggregators out there (I like Flowvana — thanks to AmISayingMeow for the tip) that can provide details on past sales and give you more robust search and filtering options.
For real-time alerts on bigger sales, the Pinnacle Bot is a good follow on X.
Here’s what I’ve been buying:
Limited editions of key characters.
Small iconic limited sets.
Older open editions with lower mints.
I’ve also opened a few of their Open Edition capsules to see what that experience is like.
This market is still developing and prices are moving quickly when the marketplace is open, so I’d be cautious about going too hard right away. But there’s enough going for this that I felt like putting in a small investment made sense.