After a brief delay in the release of the next Garbage Pail Kids card packs, the Tiger King special edition finally hit the markets yesterday. Looking back, TOPPS and WAX probably should have delayed the release even longer (more on that in a bit).
Near the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, the Tiger King show on Netflix blew up. All of these people sheltering in place at home had nothing better to do than sit on the couch and watch that train wreck of a show (from what I have heard).
Being the sophisticated folks that we are (in my least sarcastic tone), my wife and I refrained from diving into that rabbit hole. That doesn't mean I wasn't opposed to purchasing some of the NFT (Non Fungible Token) assets when they came on the TOPPS/WAX market.
After seeing the huge success of the Garbage Pail Kids series 1 cards, I knew I wanted to try my luck by buying a couple of these packs. Just for a refresher, the series 1 card packs sold out in just over 24 hours to the tune of $110,000.
Anticipation was high across the board. So much so in fact, that what you see in the Tweet above happened. That's right, the mega packs ($19.99 a piece) sold out in twenty five minutes. The standard packs ($4.99 a piece) sold out in just over an hour.
This is where things get a little sticky though...
As I said, anticipation was high. TOPPS/WAX either didn't think about that or sorely underestimated it. With no pack purchase limits in place, and a very poor judgement call to have a presale requiring a password they released in a Telegram channel, many people were left out in the cold.
I was lucky enough to purchase the two Megapacks I had planned on getting as soon as the password dropped, but a large number of people made purchases on their credit cards only to have them be refunded much later in the day because the packs were already sold out.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this is a really bad thing and I have a lot of faith that TOPPS/WAX will make some adjustments before the next NFT sale.
First, with no pack limits in place, I have a feeling there is a small number of people who own a large number of packs. This is bad because it doesn't spread the cards around enough. For those who truly want to collect full sets of the cards having to search from them on the secondary market across a large number of people would be really good for the prices.
If it is a handful of people who are putting the full sets on the secondary market, they basically control all of the prices. This is very bad thing for the smaller users (like me) who don't really value the cards as anything other than an investment.
My other concern over what happened yesterday is the amount of bad publicity the WAX chain is getting over this. Many people are (understandably) expressing their frustration on social media channels. We all know that you can do a million good things, but you do one bad thing and that is what will be all over the news. I fear the same will be true here.
WAX is an amazing chain that has a lot of potential. They have forged some impressive partnerships and are doing a lot of things right. The team has a focused vision and they are bringing in industry outsiders to help form and direct the future of the company/chain. Plus they have a cloud wallet which you can use a social media login to access. That is a huge barrier kicked down for the average joe-public user.
There are a lot of higher ranked chains (market-wise) that have a lot less to show for themselves.
All right enough with all of that. Let's get on with my pack openings.
I only opened one of the megapacks, I am saving the other one to see what the price of packs does on the secondary market. Right now the lowest ask for megapacks on Collectables.io is $77. Not a bad investment considering I only paid $19.99 for mine. The lowest price on standard packs is $11.
Sadly, I didn't get any "scratch" cards, but the one with the special tiger stripe border could be worth something some day. Current pricing for that card is at $41. If I could find a buyer at that price I would have already made my money back. Just on one card!
I also got a handful of "Prism" cards which could be worth a little more than the base cards some day. Some of those are only on the secondary market for $1 right now, so I will probably hold onto them a little longer.
So there you go! If you are a fan of collecting cards and want to invest in some digital assets, you should give WAX a look. I have no doubt in future sales more people are going to have the chance to get in on the action. With Marvel and Star Wars cards supposedly on the horizon, there is definitely a lot of potential!
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