PART I : THE INTRODUCTION
“Yall do yalls thing”
BUT
Card collecting has been around for years. The first ever sports card can be dated back to the mid-1800s. It is a pastime that has withstood the time. So, let’s start this off by going back in time to your sports childhood. Football, basketball, baseball, whatever was your fancy. Maybe you read about it in the newspaper or maybe you religiously watched it on TV. You knew the players, you loved the sport. You found THE team that you would support and root for in every game. You wanted everybody to know who you rode or died with. You wanted all the memorabilia — jerseys, posters, clothing. Then you wanted to know more about the players — game stats, where they went to college, how many years they have been in the league. You wanted that extra connection to the game, which led you to start card collecting and ripping packs.
Ripping a pack is one hell of a thrill. For me, it was always this anxious feeling — not only of when to open it, but also hoping to pull a card of one of the stars from my team, a special serial, or a cool photo shot. I had binders upon binders of the cards I had collected through the years and each of them were arranged in a very particular manner. I liked them being specifically sorted so I could show off my collection. Friends would come over with their collections and we would look through the most updated Beckett magazine to look up values and see if any deals could be made. This was literally one of my favorite childhood memories. For Christmas and birthday lists, there was always one constant — MORE PACKS!
GOING FROM CARDBOARD TO DIGITAL
Imagine buying a card pack from the local card shop. That anxiousness and thrill of ripping that pack overcomes you. You get crazy lucky and pull a low serial numbered Antonio Freeman from that memorable Monday Night Football game: Brett Farve takes the snap and launches the ball downfield. It is almost intercepted by a Viking but the football bounces off his hands, hits Freeman’s arm and is inches from touching the ground. Freeman with the heads-up play reaches back while laying on the ground, catches it before it hits, reestablishes control, then gets up and runs in for the touchdown for the overtime win! You now own this iconic catch.
Next, you decide you have to get it graded to be able to really establish its value. You carefully secure, package, and mail this card to a grading company all while hoping it doesn’t get lost or damaged in the process. The grading process can vary sometime between the range of 1–6 months. Three months later, you finally get a notification that the card has been graded and will be shipped back to you. All you can think of is PLEASE, keep this card protected and let me get it back in perfect shape with no delivery issues. You finally receive the graded card back and just as you expected, it was a near perfect card and now it has the grading behind it to prove its worth. Now you have to find a buyer. You go to different sites to list this card and wait for an offer to come in. The offer finally comes and BOOM, you’ve made a sale. But man, what a long and nerve wrecking process that was! The stress and that uneasy feeling of hoping nothing happens to this physical card during real life transactions are tough to handle. Don’t get me wrong, it has worked for a long time and people still do this today. But it takes a lot of time, patience, anxiety, and risk. But if there was only another way… LETS GO DIGITAL!
Let me introduce you to Dapper Labs. Taken from their LinkedIn profile, “Dapper Labs uses blockchain technology to bring NFTs and new forms of digital engagement to fans around the world, paving the way to a more open and inclusive digital world starting with games and entertainment.” Whoaaa, hold up, you got me, what kind of technology? NFTs and forms of digital engagement are what exactly? Yea scary and unknown terms are within that statement if you are not familiar with that world. Those words (blockchain and NFTS) will either make you go HUH? Or nah, I will pass. Bear with me and hear me out.
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
Let’s tackle blockchain first. Blockchain technology is one of the fastest growing high-tech trends. The blockchain is a decentralized, distributed and public digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the consensus of the network. Still confused, I’m sure? I really like Fabricio Santos’ explanation as he uses the analogy of a glass box to help describe what a blockchain is. His explanation in his own words:
“One of the first things people ask me when I talk to them about cryptocurrencies is “if they are stored on a computer, and what prevents someone from” copying and pasting “Bitcoin?” The explanation that the wallets have private keys for addresses often makes people confused, so this was the first idea I would like to analyze.
Imagine a huge vault of a 24 hour bank. The vault is filled with rows over rows of deposit boxes without labels. However, each depot box has a glass facade, allowing everyone to view the contents of the deposit box, but not access it.
When a person opens a new deposit box, they receive a key that is unique to that box. Making a copy of the key does not duplicate the contents of the box. And in the same way, even though you have the key, the box is not technically yours … You only have the ability to access what’s inside it.
This is fundamentally the concept of Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Anyone can see the content of all other addresses.
There is no owner information for each address, but everyone is aware of the existence of each address. When someone opens a cryptowallet, it is creating a new address in Blockchain and the private key that “unlocks” that address. This way, you can not “copy and paste” cryptocurrencies because all you could be doing is creating the copy of a key, but not the currency itself.”
WHAT ARE NFTS?
Moving on to the term NFT. NFT is short for non-fungible token. NFTs are a form of cryptocurrency that represents ‘one of a kind’ digital asset. Going back to the blockchain example above, NFTs are created/stored/live on that blockchain. These are one of a kind digital assets that cannot be duplicated, sitting inside a glass box of the bank vault that you can own. You may have heard of this phenomenon reaching crazy heights in late 2020/early 2021. NFTs were labeled as a new shiny toy and get rich quick scheme. The problem with that is — these NFTs came to light when Covid shut everything down and the government was pumping stimulus checks to everyone therefore disposable income was readily available. People took advantage and some did manage to get rich quickly from this new wave of technology. Unfortunately, the term NFT gained a bad reputation in today’s current market due to scams associated with them. But I do believe once that ‘stigma’ has worn off and NFTs are used to their potential, NFTs will continue the trend of paper going digital.
ENTER NFL ALL DAY
So now with a quick high-level overview of the blockchain and NFTs, let’s go back to Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs has started creating these digital assets via multiple products. They have a few non-sports products but what I want to touch on are the sports products. As of today, Dapper Labs covers the NFL, NBA, UFC, and La Liga. This means they have a relationship with each of these 4 major sports organizations.
Sports Organization: Dapper Product –
NFL: NFL All Day
NBA: NBA Top Shot
UFC: UFC Strike
La Liga: La Liga Golazos
I am going to focus on the NFL side of things as that is what I am most passionate about. I am a big fan of NFL All Day and this idea and what it could become in the collectible world. Let’s go back to that hypothetical crazy pull you ripped from a pack. That highly graded Antonio Freeman card. You have this standstill photo shot of him making that ridiculous catch. A great moment in the history of football. Now let’s go digital with it. Imagine the entire play. Imagine owning the entire highlight. This is exactly the opportunity Dapper Labs/NFL All Day has created. They have created these ‘moments’ for users to collect. Instead of the photo of Freeman making that catch, you could now own the digital video of the entire play. https://nflallday.com/listing/moment/880
So, your first thought is ok, I can go to YouTube and watch the highlight if I want to see it. You are not wrong, you absolutely could. My response to you would be yea that’s cool, but you are missing the connection. If I wanted to see a picture of Freeman making that catch in which technically that is what the card represents, I can google that just as easy as you are googling the video. It’s about owning that highlight. It’s about collecting that highlight. Instead of creating photos to put on cards for those memories, video is being created to put into ‘moments’. It’s taking that next step from paper to digital.
NFL All Day has also created a marketplace where these ‘moments’ can be bought and sold 24/7. So going back to the example I used earlier about ripping that numbered card and the process it took to get shipped off, graded, shipped back and sold. That stress of hoping it doesn’t get damaged? That issue has been resolved. These moments are already graded. These moments are sitting in your collection. You rip a high valued moment but don’t really want to keep it as it is an opposing player from a rival team. But yet because of the scarcity of moment and how highly it grades (tier, badges, etc. — this will get touched on in future blogs) means it could pitch a pretty penny on the marketplace! You would simply view your collection, click the moment, and list for sale. A different user who has been eyeing that grail moment selects it, buys it and you get the funds instantly. It is really that simple and the worry of it getting damaged, the long grading process, the shipment to and from is all gone!
All of this is possible because Dapper Labs/NFL All Day is making it happen. They are getting ahead of the game and making that transition from cardboard to digital. I’m sure you still have questions, but hopefully this has piqued your interest enough, you want to know more. Don’t worry, stay tuned for the next piece as we continue to go into more detail about NFL All Day and this new idea of digitally collecting.
LINKS:
-Next up, Part II: NFL All Day in Detail:
-Sign up for NFL All Day :
-For more information/easy to understand analogies on the blockchain, see link:
