NBA Top Shot Run It Back Day: How’s the Market Doing?

Today is NBA Top Shot Run It Back day, possibly the most anticipated day in the history of the site to this point.

The announcement earlier this week of the players to be included in the drop also contained some other information that will be useful for collectors. Let’s review, and then examine how the market has reacted so far.

50 Rare RIB Moments

There are 50 players with Moments coming from the 2005–2006 season, including legends like Shaq and DWade, retired Hall of Famers like Tim Duncan and Paul Pierce that already had RIB Moments last year from 2013–2014, and less heralded names like Darius Miles and Morris Peterson.

Archive Set RIB Moments

In addition to the Rare tier Moments, there will be Common Moments from both the 2005–2006 and 2013–2014 seasons, no doubt to even things up for the fact that there were no Common moments released with last season’s RIB drop. These will include some players that are in the Rare set, as well as some new names that won’t get Rare moments, like Ben Gordon, Alonzo Mourning, and Kyle Korver.

Fandom Tier RIB Moments

Previously unannounced, seven players are expected to have Fandom tier Run It Back Moments: Allen Iverson, Chris Bosh, Steve Nash, and Tony Parker will have 2005–2006 Fandom Moments but will not have Common Archive Moments, while Dwyane Wade, Shaq, and Vince Carter will have Moments across all three tiers. Fandom Tier will live between Rare and Common, so we can expect circulation counts to reflect that.

What Else You Need to Know

The Archive drop will feature both the 2005–2006 season and the 2013–2014 season. However, in an effort to maintain the value of the 2013–2014 RIB Moments that Collectors have purchased up until now, players that have an existing 2013–2014 RIB Moment will not be getting an Archive Set moment from 2013–2014 until at least 2026. So Dirk, for example, who has a 2013–2014 RIB Moment, will be getting a Common Archive moment from 2005–2006 instead. It’s not clear, though, whether that limitation applies to the Fandom tier as well. In other words, it's theoretically possible for Chris Bosh, Tony Parker, or Steve Nash to get a Fandom Moment from 2013–2014. We just know they won’t be getting a Common moment from that season.

So what does all this mean for the existing RIB market? To know that, we can look at how prices have evolved since these announcements. The challenge with the set, of course, is that it’s very illiquid; it’s not unusual to see only one or two sales a week for many of those Moments. Even removing the most expensive Moments, charting it doesn’t do much for us.

However, there may be a way to get a bit more clarity. It’s reasonable to expect that the biggest impact will be on those Moments that are used the most for set completions. Kevin Durant’s RIB, for example, is used very little for the purpose of full team set completion, and is instead a collectible on its own.

On the other hand, Steve Nash’s Top Shot Debut with the Lakers has been used largely by Laker fans to complete the team set (why else would you want a memento of Nash’s time on the Lakers??)

If we isolate those names that are used the most in set completions, we’d expect a price divergence both upward and downward:

• For those Moments that will no longer be team bottlenecks (in other words, there will be cheaper ways to obtain the same player on the same team), we’d expect prices to drop. If Steve Nash’s Fandom tier Moment comes on the Lakers, Collectors wanting the full team will no longer need to pay up for the Rare Moment.
• For those Moments where it was confirmed that they’ll remain bottlenecks, we’d expect a price rise. For example, Andrew Bogut will be receiving a Rare RIB and Archive Moment, but both of those will come from his rookie season on the Bucks. As a result, he will remain a bottleneck for the Collectors looking to collect the Warriors team set.

Thanks to our friend Jon Jackson, we can see which RIB Moments have been used the most in full team completions.

If we limit the chart to only those where 100 or more of the 275 Moments are used in full team set completion, here’s what we see:

Together, these collectively rose about 10% as a group. Meaningful, but, it turns out, not the largest gainers among the RIB set.

While set completions may be a factor in driving interest, scarcity may be a better one. Per Evaluate.Market, the largest gainers on a percentage basis over the past 7 days are these:

• Kevin Durant 56%
• Shawn Marion 39%
• KCP 32%
• Kevin Garnett 22%
• Jimmy Butler 21%
• Anderson Varejao 21%
• Amar’e Stoudemire 17%

While some of these, like KCP and Varejao, have likely risen for full team completion reasons, it’s likely that for others, some Collectors were waiting to see if the RIB Moments would be getting common equivalents from the same season.

Now that it’s been confirmed that KD, Jimmy Butler, and Amar’e won’t be included in this drop, Collectors can be confident that, for at least another year, their RIB Moments remain as scarce as they were before.

Alright, enough analysis for now. Good luck with today’s drop!