This Week on NBA Top Shot: Packs, Challenges, Market for March 14, 2022
by Chris Otis
3/14/2022
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 essential NBA Top Shot news and updates over the last week. 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 all of the latest Top Shot news and updates here every week. This past week saw a historic Trade Ticket pack drop and signs of marketplace stability, so let’s dive in.
tl;dr: This Week on NBA Top Shot
This week was all about Trade Tickets, which found new life with the ability to be used to purchase Standard and Elite All-Star Packs. Nearly 1 million Moments were traded in for Trade Tickets — 913,800 to be exact, according to Top Shot. Roughly half of all new packs dropped this week were bought with Trade Tickets, permanently reducing the supply of Moments in the Top Shot ecosystem by sending Moments to the Locker Room.
More details on the effects of this new Trade Ticket utility can be found here, courtesy of the NBA Top Shot Twitter page, but the most important bit of data is that the current total supply reduction from the use of Trade Tickets is about 2.1 million Moments! This is explained in more detail below:
The short- and long-term effects of this new Trade Ticket utility won’t be known for some time, and it remains to be seen just how often Top Shot will allow Trade Tickets to be used for “normal” pack purchases. But this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and a positive development for the Top Shot ecosystem.
On that note, let’s move on to the rest of this week’s recap, starting with the market update.
Top Shot Market Update
After a tough few weeks, the NBA Top Shot market seems to have stabilized for now, perhaps partially as a result of the fact that Trade Tickets were used for half of all new packs purchased this past week. Let’s take a look at the Marketplace Metrics and dive a little deeper.
Top Shot Marketplace Metrics
For the MR100 and Total Market Cap metrics, it seems that the market has potentially found a local bottom in this current down period, as neither has moved much at all in the past week or so. The MR100 sits around 1,600, and the Total Market Cap around $625 million. Next week should give us a better indication as to whether this stability will be longer-lasting, or if we’re due for any more changes.
Regarding the 24-hour Metrics, the relatively low number of Flash Challenges seem to have elongated the space between peaks and valleys, while the Trade Ticket Pack Drops apparently had a substantial effect on the Sales Volume metric, where despite the number of transactions staying high, the actual sales volume plummeted prior to the drop.
Overall, however, these numbers fall in line with what we’ve seen in previous weeks — there isn’t really anything significant to glean from them this week.
Biggest Top Shot Sales
Top Shot collector Cuteknick once again dominates our weekly list of the biggest Top Shot sales, with his $23,000 purchase of a Series 1 Steph Curry Holo MMXX Moment pacing this week’s list. Cuteknick also bought a Series 2 Steph Curry Deck the Hoops Moment and a Series 3 Ja Morant Holo Icon Moment, good for second and fifth on this week’s top sales list, respectively.
Closing out the top sales list are a Series 1 LeBron James MGLE, which sold for $13,000, and a Series 1 Joel Embiid Moment that went for $11,000.
Top Shot Pack Drops This Week
All-Star Packs (Release 4)
As mentioned above, the final release of the All-Star Packs occurred throughout this past week, starting with Stress Tests on Tuesday before they were released in staggered drops on Wednesday and Thursday.
This not only marked the first time that “normal” packs were made available for purchase with Trade Tickets, but may also mark the end of the controversial Standard and Elite Packs format as Top Shot analyze the data and feedback from this past month’s experimentation.
The Moments featured in these drops included several new Legendary Holo Icon Moments, the second set of Rare 2022 NBA All-Star Game Moments, and eight all-new Common LE Fresh Threads Moments from players traded at the deadline.
While the holy grail of these drops would arguably be this Damian Lillard Holo Icon, LaMelo Ball’s sneaky assist to Devin Booker is my personal favorite, from what will surely be the first of many All-Star appearances for LaMelo.
This Week in Top Shot Challenges
While the past couple weeks have seen a slight reduction in the number of Showcase Challenges, there were still three new Traditional Challenges and three new Flash Challenges that went live this week. Let’s take a look at them below!
Top Shot Traditional Challenges
Following this past week’s final All-Star Pack Drop, new Challenges for the Holo Icon, 2022 All-Star Game, and Fresh Threads sets have gone live and will run through the weekend. Challenge rewards will feature Anthony Davis (Holo), Steph Curry (ASG), and CJ McCollum (Fresh Threads), respectively.
Top Shot Flash Challenges
The frenetic, nightly pace that Flash Challenges had been dropping seems to have slowed quite a bit, but this week did see the implementation of three new Flash Challenges, including one with a fun, randomized twist.
First up was The Wheel, an all new Flash Challenge for which the requirements were decided on a live-stream by spinning — you guessed it — a wheel. The reward of this one was a Kevin Durant MSFE Moment.
The week continued with Raising The Bar, which rewarded collectors with a Josh Giddey MSFE Moment, and Around The Bend, which ran through the weekend and offered users a chance at a Scottie Barnes MSFE Moment.
Miscellaneous Top Shot Updates
- MomentRanks debuted a new feature allowing users to group their Top Shot collections however they wish on their MR Top Shot page. Now, collectors can easily organize their collection.
- Top Shot has a new Flash Challenge landing page, signaling a potential shift away from using the Top Shot blog to announce Flash Challenges and requirements (this weekend’s Flash Challenge did not feature a corresponding blog post).
- Packrip Ewing posted this blog recapping the NBA All-Star VIP Pass NFT auctions so far.
- The winner of the NBA ALl-Star VIP Pass NFT giveaway was announced.
- Across the Dapperverse, NFL All Day dropped Week 18 “Replay” Packs featuring Moments from the last week of the 2021 NFL season.
The Week Ahead on Top Shot
My personal expectation is that the next week will be a very quiet one in the world of NBA Top Shot. Per the above tweet, we can expect to see one more drop including Fresh Threads Moments at some point in March, but the form it will take and just when it will happen are anyone’s best guess at this point.
The folks at Top Shot have said that they would take some time to analyze the data and feedback from the experimental Standard/Elite Packs system, and I would guess that we’ll start getting some communication about their conclusions some time later in the week.
Until then, there should be Flash Challenges to keep everyone occupied throughout the week, so just hang tight and be patient as we all anxiously wait to hear what’s coming next.
That’s all for this week everyone, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all back here next Sunday!