This Week on NBA Top Shot: Market News from January 1-7
by Chris Otis
1/7/2022
Welcome to the first This Week in Top Shot, a new weekly blog from Otis Top Shot and your friends here at MomentRanks that’ll dive into each week’s essential NBA Top Shot news and updates. Pack drops, flash challenges, marketplace insight, noteworthy transactions — 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 here. Let’s get started with the first week of 2022 on Top Shot.
tl;dr: This Week on NBA Top Shot
Top Shot closed out 2021 with a bang by dropping the Deck the Hoops 2010s Legendary packs alongside the first of five releases the Series 3 MGLE set in Premium Packs, before following that up with a Series 1 Reserve drop.
That momentum was then carried through into the new year with new Showcase Challenges and Flash Challenges, the distribution of the Christmas Day Challenge rewards, a new pack drop/airdrop announcement, and a very special blog post from Packrip Ewing, who now writes to us from the other side.
We also get an announcement of the upcoming pack drop for Hustle and Show packs — $14 packs dropping next Tuesday. Hustle and Show Series 2 set holders will receive three airdropped Hustle and Show packs from the drop for free.
Let’s take a closer look at all the Top Shot news from the week that was.
Top Shot Market Update
While still quite a long way off from reaching the highs witnessed over the NBA offseason late this summer, the market seems to be strong and healthy at present, despite Flash Challenges showcasing considerable influence over the day-to-day fluctuations in the values of affected Moments.
Top Shot Marketplace Metrics
Both the MR100 and Total Market Cap saw a steady, sustained rise throughout the week, with the MR100 growing by nearly 6 percent, and the Top Shot market cap by roughly 4.5 percent. In both cases, the local bottom witnessed around mid-December seems to be a thing of the past.
Regarding the 24-hour sales metrics, the return of Flash Challenges on January 3 after a several day hiatus re-ignited the marketplace, with activity spiking back to levels typical of the past few weeks. January 5th in particular saw a ton of action, likely as a result of a very special Flash Challenge (more on that later), with over 12,000 unique buyers and 60,000 transactions.
Top Sales
To further illustrate the extent to which Challenges are running the marketplace at the moment, four of the top five sales of the week were Dwyane Wade Deck The Hoops Moments (current low ask: $9,999) required for the second Deck The Hoops Showcase Challenge.
Coming in at the fifth spot this week, though, is a Trae Young S1 Holo MMXX (new floor: $40,000) that went for $30,000, marking the first time a young Holo MMXX has been sold on since January 20, 2021. Congratulations on the purchase, Sanjuro!
This Week in Top Shot Challenges
After a slow couple of days to open up the new year, Showcase Challenges returned to rule the week. Three flash challenges, three legacy challenges, and the distribution of the Christmas Day Flash Challenge rewards resulted in non-stop action that kept collectors engaged.
Showcase Challenges
Deck The Hoops Challenge 2 (closed January 4): LeBron James
The second and final Deck The Hoops Showcase Challenge rewarded collectors who were brave (and financially-endowed) enough to complete it with the second-scarcest LeBron Moment on the Top Shot platform, an incredible off-the-backboard alley-oop from his old partner-in-crime Dwyane Wade on Christmas Day 2013.
Limited to a minuscule mint count of just 34, this is sure to be one of the most sought after high-end LeBron Moments for years to come.
Series 3 MGLE Challenge 2 (closed January 4): Davion Mitchell
This season’s second MGLE Showcase Challenge was for what will surely be one of the defining moments of Davion Mitchell’s rookie season. In just his second game, he played spoiler to the league’s more famous D. Mitchell, locking him down in isolation and creating one of the more memorable highlights of the NBA’s opening week.
The rare challenge reward was minted to 263, currently holding a $880 floor.
Series 3 MGLE Challenge 3 (closed January 7): Trae Young
The third and final Showcase Challenge of the first MGLE drop of Series 3 rewarded collectors with a classic Trae Young handles Moment, with Ice Trae putting Pacers guard Kelan Martin on skates before hitting a step-back jumper.
Flash Challenges
This week saw three new Flash Challenges get introduced: First To 15, Protect The Rock, and the two-tiered Let It Fly.
First To 15 required collectors to construct a showcase including Moments from the first player to reach 15 points in each of the 10 games on January 3. The reward was an Series 2 Base Set pack.
Protect The Rock required collectors to build a showcase that included Moments from the players that had the highest assist-turnover differential from each of the four games on January 4th. The reward was an S2 Base Set pack once again, though Scottie Barnes’ performance dashed most collectors’ chances in this one.
Let It Fly was a two-tiered Flash Challenge that included both an easy and hard route; I’d imagine we’ll be seeing many more like this going forward. The easy route required collectors to construct a showcase that included Moments from the five players who led the night of January 5th in 3-point attempts, whereas the hard route necessitated a showcase including Moments from those five players in addition to five Rare 3-pointer Moments. The reward for the easy route was another S2 Base Set pack, whereas the reward for the hard route was a newly minted LaMelo Ball MSFE Moment, which finished with a mint count of just 255.
Packs
Unsurprisingly, after the couple weeks prior saw Deck The Hoops, MGLE, and Series 1 Reserve packs released, this past week didn’t feature any new pack drops. There was a big pack announcement made about next week, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Locker Pack (Release 7)
The seventh iteration of the Locker Packs features Moments from both the S2 and S3 Base Sets. It’s been available for quite awhile at this point, but there are still about 40,000 packs available for the price of 4 trade tickets.
The odds of getting anything significant in the pack aren’t great, but if you can snipe $1 or $2 Moments off the floor, it might be worth giving it a go.
Miscellaneous Top Shot Updates
Some other things of note to occur this week include:
- NBA Top Shot Community Lead Jacob Eisenberg gave his beloved jersey-filled live stream background a proper send-off by visiting a bunch of different community streams, including MomentRanks Shot Talkin’.
- Community legend turned NBA Top Shot Content Publishing Lead Packrip Ewing gave us a look behind the curtain at his first day on the job.
- Top Shot announced that gifting restrictions would remain lifted through the month of January for KYC’d collectors.
- With the Hustle & Show airdropped packs coming and consistent flash challenges to win packs, the Top Shot community began discussing the concept of collecting and holding Moments as an early staking mechanism for Top Shot.
The Week Ahead on Top Shot
The biggest news of the week dropped on Thursday, with Top Shot announcing that the Series 3 return of community-favorite Hustle and Show will be coming on Tuesday, January 11. The full list of players in this set has yet to be revealed, but per the YouTube hype video, it will feature Marcus Smart, Myles Turner, Dillon Brooks, Aaron Gordon, and more.
The H&S Moments will have mint counts of 18,000, and packs will feature one H&S Moment alongside four S3 Base Set Moments. Packs will cost $14 each, with 155,000 available for sale, and a limit of 2 packs purchased per collector.
Hustle and Show Packs Airdrop
In addition, all Complete Set holders of the S2 iteration of Hustle and Show will be airdropped three S3 H&S packs, for a total of more than 13,000 free packs being given away to the passionate H&S sub-community.
Since H&S is dropping next week, it’s unlikely there will be any other significant drops that occur, but a Base Set drop certainly can’t be ruled out for later on in the week. Whenever the next Base Set drop does occur, Jalen Green seems to be the likeliest rookie to be next up for his Top Shot Debut.
Regarding Showcase Challenges, there will be two for the Hustle and Show drop, and there will certainly be a few Flash Challenges thrown in the mix throughout the week as well.
That’s it for this week everyone! Good luck in the Hustle & Show queue on Tuesday, and I’ll see you all back here next Friday.