This Week on NBA Top Shot: The First S3 Holo Icon Pack Drop

Welcome back to This Week on NBA Top Shot, a weekly blog from Otis Top Shot and your friends here at MomentRanks that dives into each week’s essential NBA Top Shot news and updates. Pack drops, Flash Challenges, marketplace insights, noteworthy sales, community news — we’ve got you covered on all of it and more.

Everything that happens on Top Shot can be a lot to keep up with — but you’ll be able to find it all here every week. This week was a very memorable one on Top Shot, so let’s dive right in.

tl;dr: This Week on NBA Top Shot

A few super exciting pack drops and a record-breaking number of Flash Challenges resulted in one of the most engaging and fun weeks on NBA Top Shot in recent memory. While only a limited number of collectors got a chance to rip this week’s Holo Icon, Premium, and Series 1 Reserve Packs, nearly everyone was involved on a near-nightly basis for the new Flash Challenges that went live.

Top Shot Market Update

Now that this action packed week is in the books, let’s take a look at how the market reacted to everything that went down.

Top Shot Marketplace Metrics

After several days of stability, both the MR100 and Total Market Cap made downturns in the aftermath of the Holo Icon and MGLE Drops on January 25. The Total Market Cap recovered a bit afterwards, closing the week around $810 million, while the MR100 dipped further towards the end of the week.

The 24-hour metrics this week continued to fluctuate wildly on a daily basis based on how accessible each evening’s Flash Challenge wound up being. The most notable points here are the high number of transactions, and unique buyers and sellers, that came after the pack drops on January 25, as well as the more than $3.5 million in 24-hour sales volume seen towards the end of the week.

Biggest Top Shot Sales of the Week

A LeBron James Moment once again sees the top of our biggest sales of the week list, with a $45,000 purchase of a 2020 NBA Finals Legendary Moment. This sale is well under both the new floor and the average sale price of this Moment, which are $96,000 and $134,700, respectively.

Beyond that, Steph Curry From the Top Legendary Moments ruled the week, accounting for three of the next four biggest sales.

Top Shot Pack Drops

Imagine being able to hit a Legendary Luka Doncic, Rare LaMelo Ball, and LeBron Top Shot Debut all in the span of a few days? That’s the opportunity that was offered up this week in a flurry of highly anticipated pack drops.

Series 3 Holo Icon (Drop 1)

First up this past Tuesday was the Series 3 debut of Holo Icon, NBA Top Shot’s flagship Legendary set. 15 new Holo Icon Moments were released across two queues, with 1,400 packs available at $999 a piece, including my personal favorite — Marcus Smart making three-time DPOY Rudy Gobert look foolish on this put-back slam. From a financial perspective, however, the undoubted top pull would be this Luka buzzer-beater against my beloved Celtics, which currently has a floor price of over $7,000.

Premium Pack — Series 3 MGLE (Drop 2)

Immediately following the Holo Icon drop came the second MGLE release of Series 3. A total of 8,250 packs were made available across two queues, with 14 new MGLE Moments getting released into the Top Shot ecosystem.

Unquestionably, everyone who hit on one of these was hoping to pull one of the two transcendent stars in this drop: Steph Curry and LaMelo Ball. Both plays are spectacular and, based on current floor prices, could turn that $89 pack purchase into $1,000 Dapper balance.

Money aside, my favorite Moment from this drop is easily the Desmond Bane alley-oop reverse layup. The finish is smooth as silk, but even better is the casual toss from Steven Adams that makes the ball look like nothing more than a slightly oversized orange.

Series 1 Reserve (Batch 3)

Finally, on January 27, the third batch (of seven) of Series 1 Reserve packs was dropped, with 500 packs available at a price of 350 trade tickets.

Each pack contained four Series 1 Base Set Moments, including one 1,000 mint count Moment and three more minted between 1,240 and 3,999. The notable pulls here, of course, would be LeBron and Curry Top Shot Debut Moments.

This Week in Top Shot Challenges

In what was easily the most frenetic week yet in terms of challenges, Top Shot had a Flash Challenge going nearly every night of the week, in addition to two new “traditional” Showcase Challenges going live. Let’s take a look at how it all went down.

Showcase Challenges

The first Holo Icon Challenge of Series 3 features the second of the two stunning buzzer-beaters DeMar DeRozan hit on consecutive nights, which incredibly occurred across two different years, with one coming on New Year’s Eve and the other on New Year’s Day. This is certainly a very fitting Moment to kick off the Holo Icon Challenges of Series 3.

The next Holo Icon challenges are set to be a Ja Morant block and a rookie Franz Wagner dunk.

The fourth MGLE Challenge of Series 3 honors Pacers rookie Chris Duarte’s incredible game-tying three that sent Indiana’s late-November battle with the Lakers into overtime. Duarte has become one of the Pacers’ most important players this season, showcasing why he became a lottery selection in the draft despite his older age for a rookie.

New Top Shot Flash Challenges

An incredible five new Flash Challenges went live over the past week, including one that spanned the entirety of last weekend’s NBA slate, meaning that only Thursday night was without some sort of Flash Challenge action.

• Seize The Weekend:
  • Requirements: Moments from the top nine players who accounted for the highest single-game scoring totals over the weekend (Jan 21-23), plus any Kevin Durant Moment.
  • Reward: Anthony Davis MSFE
• NYC vs LA:
  • Requirements: 3 Hometown Showdown: Cali vs. New York Series 1 Moments, Rare or Legendary Moments of the top scorer from the Lakers, Clippers, Knicks and Nets on January 23, and Rare or Legendary Moments of the three players who led January 23 in assists.
  • Reward: Hometown Showdown: Cali vs. NY Series 1 Pack
• Role Players:
  • Requirements: Moments from the five bench players who recorded the most combined points, rebounds, and assists in the games played on January 24.
  • Reward: Terance Mann MSFE
• First To 3:
  • Requirements: Moments from the first player to make three 3-pointers in each of the nine games played Jan 25, plus any additional Kevin Durant Moment
  • Reward: Buddy Hield MSFE
• Charity Stripe:
  • Requirements: Any Moment from the players who made the most free throws in each of the games on Jan 26 (EASY); Rare, Legendary, or Top Shot Debut Moment from the players who made the most free throws in each of the games on Jan 26 (HARD).
  • Reward: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander MSFE (EASY); Rare Series 2 Pack (HARD)

The Kevin Durant Top Shot Starter Challenge also wraps up this week, with it set to expire on January 31. If you’re new to NBA Top Shot and haven’t done so already, make sure you complete this one to get a free Series 2 Base Set Pack!

Miscellaneous Top Shot Updates

• Top Shot rolled out a new feature making it visible how many collectors have saved a Moment to their Watchlist.
• Across the Dapperverse, NFL All Day‘s Divisional Round packs are coming today at 4 P.M. EST (January 28), and UFC Strike collectors are getting reimbursed $50 per pack purchased to make up for a bug that affected the odds of pulling top-tier Moments in the packs.

The Week Ahead on Top Shot

While there hasn’t been anything announced yet regarding any potential pack drops next week, I’d imagine that something is coming. Perhaps the frequently-teased Kevin Durant curation set will be announced in the coming days, but I would expect a Base Set drop next week at the very least.

If the past couple weeks have been any indication, then it’s likely we’ll see a weekend-long Flash Challenge coming soon, and at least four or so more coming throughout next week. There will also be more traditional Showcase Challenges for the Holo Icon and MGLE sets coming as well, so stay tuned!

That’s all for this week everyone, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all back here next Friday.

Follow Chris Otis on Twitter: @OtisTopShot