Rare Pepes: The Most Important Digital Collectibles in NFT History
Being an ardent collector for many years, I understand collectors’ mindset and collectibles as an alternative investment asset. I’ve collected everything from coins, antique books, print/posters, hockey cards, Pokémon cards, and of course, digital collectibles. And what I am comfortable saying is that “Rare Pepes” has the properties required to be a long-term investable collectible.
Rare Pepes are one of the most historically and culturally important NFTs even though it hasn’t had the media hype like Crypto Punks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, or Curio Cards. I believe this is partly due to its extensive depth of history, which few recognize even within the NFT space. Furthermore, the incredibly vast size of the collection and blockchain compatibility challenges has made it difficult for NFT marketplaces like “Open Sea” to integrate in a way conducive to a positive buying/selling experience. However, I am optimistic that these are solvable issues. Although Rare Pepes may not be the most well-structured collection, it has a passionate community of collectors and a wide degree of variability in style and rarity to keep collectors intrigued for years.
Cultural and Historical Significance
The historical and cultural significance of Rare Pepes cannot be understated. Rare Pepes was released in 36 series between 2016 to 2018 making it one of the earliest NFT collections. It predates both “Crypto Kitties” and “Curio Cards.” Furthermore, “Pepe the Frog” is one of the most iconic internet memes in history. Many Rare Pepes poked fun at culturally prominent figures in crypto and social media during that period. Rare Pepes depicted people like Bitmain Miner CEO Jihan Wu, Craig Wright (Faketoshi), Trump, Bernie Sanders, Dogecoin, Joe Rogan, and many more in the humorous Pepe meme style. In many ways, it’s the rawest form of art and provides a snapshot of the internet culture of that time in its purest form.
Furthermore, it illustrated how Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) could enable and empower artists for the first time. For example, the HomerPepe from Series 2 made headlines when it sold for $38,500 USD during the 1st live auction for blockchain art in 2018. While $38,500 isn’t exactly newsworthy in the NFT landscape today, but it was mindblowing in 2018.
Depth of Variation
Collectibles may be a community-driven asset class but collecting itself is a very personal hobby. Variation allows for a greater range of individual collecting goals and a broader audience to participate.
The Rare Pepe collection includes hundreds of cards produced by different artists worldwide with varying complexity. There is also tremendous variation in rarity, with a few cards being 1/1s; while several others with an issuance as high as a Billion with a capital B! This degree of variation and depth keeps collectors engaged and allows collectors regardless of their level of disposable income to partake.
TODAY, most NFT Avatar projects attempt to introduce variation through randomly generated traits… but that isn’t sufficient for it to be collectible. Besides a few exceptions, rarity scores based on avatar traits aren’t appealing enough to give individual NFT its unique identity.
In my opinion, they function far more as branded fungible community access tokens than collectibles.
Rare Pepe Set/Series Structure
Although variability is a good thing, being well-structured is helpful to not create confusion or be a barrier to adoption.
A structured collection creates a framework to understand the collectible. It’s why trading cards have set releases with unique stylistic themes, and individual cards include rarity or issuance denotations. Set/Series gives collectibles an identity that can be easily understood, and rarity/issuance denotation provides a starting point for collectors to comprehend scarcity.
Rare Pepes had a group of fine folks called “Rare Pepe Scientists” who filtered through thousands of Pepe submissions and released Rare Pepes in 36 chronological series giving it a semblance of structure that would have otherwise been a confusing mess.
To be clear, Rare Pepe isn’t a perfectly structured collection. The rarity of the cards isn’t visually predictable, nor is the issuance number or Series denoted on the digital cards. The Series doesn’t have an overarching theme to give individual Series their own unique identity either. Though generally speaking, many of the cards from earlier Series stuck to a trading card game design which went away in later Series. And many would also say that the quality from an artistic perspective improved in the latter Series, but… I guess art is also subjective.
It is also relevant to note that most NFTs presently trade on Ethereum; meanwhile, Rare Pepes resides on Bitcoin’s meta-layer Counterparty (XCP). A workaround introduced only recently using what is known as “ emblem vaults” enabled Rare Pepes to trade on Ethereum based NFT marketplaces like Opensea, but it isn’t without issues. Opensea has yet been able to organize Rare Pepe’s enormous collection in a user-friendly manner. To make matters worse, Opensea occasionally allows scam listings to slip through in the form of empty emblem vaults. Consequently, the market for trading Rare Pepe is cumbersome and certainly not welcoming for beginners, though I am confident these challenges are addressable.
While valuation for art and collectibles can be difficult due to their subjective nature, I am bullish on Rare Pepe as a long-term investable collectible.
As the industry matures, NFT marketplaces, Dapps, and even social media platforms will become more interoperable and find better ways to integrate digital art and collectibles. NFT marketplaces & Dapps will likely display and allow filtering/sorting of Rare Pepes by quantity issued, Series, and many other parameters that will drastically optimize the user experience. One day, we may even trade digital goods and collectibles directly on our social media platforms.
Furthermore, NFTs and digital goods are presently a niche market, but applications for non-fungible tokens are so immense, I have little doubt they’ll eventually be a societal norm. The public grossly underestimates the impact NFTs will have on every facet of our lives. And broadly speaking, NFT collectors/investors have largely overlooked the historical importance of Rare Pepes as a digital NFT collectible and its cultural significance in the history of internet memes. Journalists’ limited knowledge of Rare Pepe’s story may be a contributing factor to its lack of media attention. But that may not always be the case.
Twitter — https://twitter.com/TheCryptoCents
Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogvXhPT0mdJp4vmf-FNHNA
Rare Pepe Resources
RarePepeDirectory — http://rarepepedirectory.com/
RarePepe Trading Discord — discord.gg/HThxcmvpXd
RarePepe Telegram — https://t.me/joinchat/BRVvb0CXaxt2jjCb5OZSsA
