Well, you digital degenerates. It's that time of the month again. No, I don't mean the 7 days you banish your wife or girlfriend out to the woods every month while you burn their belongings to drive away the demonic spirits. It's Funko's latest drop of NFT's coming this next Tuesday! If you're unfamiliar with Funko, they are a well known collectible toy company that has access to an insane amount of license's for their products. There's a big market for their products, with some of their very limited items going for tens of thousands of dollars. They've dipped their toes into the NFT world over the past 7 months, doing a handful of drops on the Wax blockchain and using atomichub for second market support. A big component of interest in these drops is that there are specific NFT's that are redeemable for a physical Funko Pop in the real world. And, because they're all pretty limited, most of them are going to be worth some decent money. There are a limited amount of packs available, each containing 5-15 cards depending on which packs you get. Prices range from $10 to $30 per pack as well.
Previous drops have ranged all over the place. We've had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bob Ross, Retro Comics, Halloween, Star Trek, Nickelodeon and Iron Maiden themed drops. This time around, the drop is going to be Transformers themed. Now, the reception for these NFT's in the past have been very mixed. I would say a large part of Funko's fanbase is blockchain illiterate, and doesn't have any idea how to use the systems in place to participate in the drops. It's honestly very easy, but, I guess boomers gonna boomer. Even if they're millennial boomers. So, people get very angry when they see new figures/molds are coming from these NFT drops, and considered them to be locked behind a paywall or gambling. It's honestly been kind of hilarious seeing peoples reactions on twitter and reddit, but also just kind of frustrating with how stupid some of the takes can be. But, lets move on from that. Lets talk about what kind of hype/prices we're looking at for this set with the people who do collect Funko NFT's.
So, I would say Transformers has a pretty big fanbase, especially with people in their 30's and 40's as well other people who are into retro shows and cartoons. I've definitely have seen more hype over this Transformers drop versus some of the others, like the Bob Ross drop and the Retro Comics set as well. But, I definitely can safely say after scrolling through several social media sites, that the hype for this set seems much less than the previous Nickelodeon drop. This isn't to say that the drop will be a failure or anything, because it wont be. I'm 100 percent confident that this will sell out within 30-40 minutes. (People will double/triple/be a rat and quad dip into the queue system to grab packs to flip.) But, I think the smaller amount of hype is probably due to the lackluster physical redeemable's that are available for the set, (This also includes me, though I'm not a troglodyte for these figures where I have to hoard every single last one in existence or commit seppuku, to be fair.) which heavily affects the price for the set. If you're wondering what the figures look like that you can pull out of these NFT's, here's a peak.
Here are the physical products you can get later on if you're lucky enough to pull one out of a pack. Or, just rich enough to shell out money for any that you want. The rarest thing in this set is the golden Optimus Prime grail, which is limited to 999 pieces. The grail rarity items in their drops have been really hit or miss, and this one is seemingly a miss thus far from what opinions I can gather. Most people find it very dull/boring design wise, and although it's very limited and a beloved character, I don't think this one will pop off in the long run. I'm going to guess on drop day, the price will be sitting at around $200-250, and it will settle in at $180-220 after a couple of days. Though, I'm just guessing at the price based on previous grail NFT prices for sets that were considered to be floppy penis.
The rest are new molds/characters now shown in the Funko world. Each of them is limited to 1550 pieces. However, people seem very lukewarm still on these, and I'm going to guess that the prices on these will fluctuate a lot. I would guess the NFT's will be going for $60-90 on drop day, and then will settle into $45-80 each. The big hitter out of this set for me personally, and from the opinions I scrolled through on twitter/discord/reddit, would be the Royalty rarity NFT from this set. It's Freddy Funko as Bumblebee, and it's limited to 2397 pieces. The royalty rarity is comprised of owning every common to epic card in the set, and with this set that means having all 108 NFT's. This one is by far the best, most interesting looking mold out of the bunch. I personally think it's very goofy in a good way, and it's also focused on probably the second most popular Autobot character. Freddy Funko is also a big draw with the Funko community, probably because there are so many figures of the character worth big money.
I personally am just planning on trying to finish out the royalty set, and if I get any other redeemable NFT's through the packs, then I'll probably just trade them or dump them to be honest. I think the royalty figure is the one that will be worth a good chunk of change in the future, and it's really the only decent looking one out of the bunch. That's not to say the rest won't be worth anything, because they will. Anything that's limited with Funko and features at least a semi popular character will be moveable and worth something to someone. But, yeah. I'm kind of on the fence with this release and can't decide if I'm looking forward to it or not. I guess it doesn't really matter though, because with Funko making between 500-700k per drop, there's no end in sight to when these drops will slow down. So, I'll be looking into the hype of something new within the next couple of weeks, I'm sure.
So, until next time, which will probably be when I'm cracking into some of these packs.
Later!