How to get started on NBA Top Shot
An Introductory and Analytical Guide on how to navigate NBA Top Shot (with Portfolio Buy-In Guide Recommendations)
Are you a NBA fan that doesn’t know much about finance or NFT? Or are you a NFT fan that knows nothing about the NBA? It doesn’t matter what your background is, but as long as you want to get started on NBA Top Shot, then this is the starting guide for you.
We are a Canadian-based group focused on creating analytical contents specifically on NBA Top Shot. This article will help both beginners to get started in NBA Top Shot, and provide useful information for current users as well!
First things first. Let’s start with 6 basic steps on how to get started:
Step 1: Create a Dapper account
Your Dapper account will act as your account manager and as well as a payment service, for example like PayPal. Through your Dapper account, you will be able to see your approved payment methods and as well as your money.
Register for NBA Top Shot with Dapper
Step 2: Add funds to your Dapper Balance
In order to start buying packs or moments from the Marketplace, you first have to add funds to your Dapper Balance. You can still buy packs and moments from single transactions through your Credit card, but you will be charged service fees each time. So it is smarter to add funds to your Dapper Balance in order to avoid additional fees and pay that service fee once. You will then be able to buy packs and moments from your balance. You will receive an email confirmation after every purchase and transaction completed through your Dapper Account.
Step 3: Follow all pack drop alerts
Best way to get started is to buy some packs. It is starting to get harder and harder to buy packs, but you should always follow all the alert notifications available and try to purchase them. If you don’t have Twitter or Instagram then this is the time to make an account. Make sure you follow NBA Top Shot on Twitter, Instagram and Discord, and subscribe for their Emails.
Twitter: NBA Top Shot (@nba_topshot)
Instagram: NBA Top Shot (@nba_topshot)
Discord: NBA Top Shot (discord.com)
Step 4: Go checkout the marketplace
Getting packs are hard, but you can always start from the Marketplace. Familiarize yourself with the Marketplace and start by looking up your favourite players. You can check out all their Moments, including different Tiers and Sets. Check out their cheapest and most expensive Moment, look at the Lowest Price, the Highest Price, Serial Numbers, and Recent Sales History. Make use of the filter and sorting features as well.
Step 5: Buy and Sell
Once you are ready to buy and know what Moment you want to purchase, double check the price and serial number to make sure there isn’t a better option that is cheaper or at the same price but with a lower serial number. Once your transaction has gone through, it might take a few minutes for it to process. You can always check your notifications at the top right (The bell icon) to see your Purchase Activity. If the purchase is there, then that means you have successfully bought the Moment.
When you are ready to sell your Moments, go to your Collection and select the Moment you want to sell. You can then place that Moment for sale. Enter the amount you are looking for, but take note of the 5% Marketplace Fee you will be charged for every completed sale. The Total Payout will be how much you will receive at the end for the Moment.
We will be publishing a future article in detail as well on how Canadians can cash-out. Follow us on Twitter to know when the article drops!
Step 6: Keeping track of your assets
Now that you have started your collection, you should start considering how to keep track of your investments, assets, transactions, and profits. The simplest way is to create a spreadsheet to write down this information. Here are some examples of what you should keep track of:
Moments Bought, Serial Numbers, Purchase Prices, Market Prices
Packs Bought, Their Prices
Total Investment
Moments Sold
Profit
We will be publishing a future article in detail on how to effectively keep track of your assets. Follow us on Twitter to know when the article drops!
Advanced Analytics
Now that we have covered the basics on how to get started, it is time for the analytical part of NBA Top Shot. In order to be successful with your investments, you must first understand the market. Unlike investments in the stock market, the “Marketplace” for trading NBA Top Shot moments is always open (with the exception of site maintenance). At the time of this article, there are approximately 250,000 total users currently registered on NBA Top Shot.
When investing in moments, there are no financial statements to review nor will there be a prospectus (printed document) to study prior to making your decision on purchases. Instead of the traditional methods of ratio analyses, moment values are determined by the following factors:
Serial Number: In general, the lower the better, with exceptions such as Jersey Numbers, Last Minted and Repeated Serials
Player Popularity: As with most collectibles, the more popular the player is, the more valuable their moment is going to be.
Tier: Moments in NBA Top Shot are separated into four tiers: Common, Rare, Legendary and Ultimate. The tier dictates the rarity and scarcity of the moment, which directly correlates to the value.
The Actual Play: Moments are video highlights of a player on the court. As such, the more iconic and flashy the play is, it will garner more attention, and thus resulting in the value of the moment to rise.
However, in addition to the above unconventional valuation methods to look at moments, we can also use traditional valuation methods used in the stock market to gain useful information. One particular useful method is utilizing the resistance/support levels. This is where a market trend tool such as Evaluate Market comes in handy. Using this tool, we are able to look at any particular moment and its historical sale price trend.
We will also be publishing a future article in detail on how to properly evaluate the market and utilizing all different kinds of factors and valuation methods to maximize profits. Follow us on Twitter to know when the article drops!
Portfolio Buy-In Guide
After getting an account set up, and analyzing the market for potential investments, it is time to actually put your money down and invest! Same with any other investments, diversification of portfolio plays a huge role in minimizing risks. As you may already know, market values of moments are extremely volatile. We are aiming to release new portfolio buy-in guides regularly. For this edition, we will be focusing our recommendations on the 2021 All-Star Events.
The portfolio buy-in tips below are created based on our own opinions and research. Please do your own research and invest at your own risk!
*Note: The market prices at the time this article is put together could be significantly different than the actual market prices.
$500 Buy-in
With a $500 Buy-in, we believe that the best strategy is to focus on short term gains and reposition into a more diversified portfolio that has a balance of short term and long term moments when the profits from investments are realized.
Set a price target for your moments
Resell to purchase other moments such as S2 /7500 LE or S1 moments
$1000 Buy-in:
With a $1000 Buy-in, we recommend having a mixture of /7500 Series 2 moments with /15000 Series 2 moments. This is because we believe /7500 Series 2 will have better growth in the long run since they have a lower circulating count. This will allow investors to further diversify their portfolio with long term holds while having flexibility to sell and reinvest other moments in the short run.
We will continue building new sample portfolios in future articles to help readers with their investments.
Helpful Resources
This is it for our first introductory article on NBA Top Shot. Follow us on Twitter to know when new articles drop! We have plenty more information we want to spread throughout the NBA Top Shot community. However, if you want more information or helpful tips, we recommend taking a look at the list of helpful resources below:
https://evaluate.market/ - Market trend tool, as well as for account valuation
www.momentranks.com - Another account valuation tool (that takes serial numbers into consideration)
Twitter accounts to follow:
NBA Top Shot - Official Twitter for everything NBA Top Shot
TheFirstMint - Premier Twitter channel for useful TS information
Terminologies
There may also be specific terms used within the NBA Top Shot community that have different meanings outside of the platform, so below is a list of terminologies you may encounter, and what they mean:
Floor: The floor refers to the generalized current lowest asking price of a moment. Most people tend to purchase the moments at the lowest asking price (if they do not value things like serial number) in order to spend the least amount of money. This also means that if one was to sell a moment, it is expected that they can get in return the floor price at the minimum. There may be one-off cases where a moment is sold below the floor value by a lot, but those are exceptions.
Dip: A dip refers to the drop in the sale price of a moment over an extended period of time, so it is not a sudden, one-off incident. This is note-worthy as the drop in the value of a moment itself or a particular trend in the market caused by other factors (like the introduction of new moments to dilute the market).
Fluctuation: As with traditional stocks, there are buyers and sellers constantly posting new moments for sale at any particular time. Due to how people value the moments differently, as well as various internal/external factors, the sale price of any particular moment can and will fluctuate. To be successful, it is essential to embrace the fluctuations and capitalize on it.
Challenges: In Top Shot, there are Challenges that will release every once in a while. These Challenges revolve around the same idea: Collect a particular list of moments before the timer expires and be rewarded with an exclusive moment that cannot be pulled from packs. The most famous of these challenges is the Cool Cats Master Challenge, as it requires completion of in several different small challenges, each with its own separate reward. You can go to Top Shot Challenges to view all current active challenges.
Market Cap: Market Cap, or Market Capitalization, is a term usually used in traditional stocks. It refers specifically to a monetary value that is obtained by multiplying the number of moments available by the current lowest asking price of the moment. One could look at the Market Cap of a particular moment and compare it to moments of a similar nature (by the same player, a similar play etc.) and determine if a moment is under or overvalued.
Mint: Each moment created by Top Shot goes through a process called “mint”, which refers to the moment being officially created and ready to be released to the public. Due to the moments being created on a blockchain, these minted moments will forever exist, and will either be released in packs or through other promotional events to the public. Using tools like https://evaluate.market/, you will be able to see how many of each moment are minted, and of those minted, how many were released/still in packs.