New Kid on the Block(chain)

Whether you’ve been here since day one or today is day one for you, the experience is similar:

1. Log onto Top Shot ✅
2. Buy and Rip Your First Pack ✅
3. What happens next?

Figuring out what Moments to buy and what to collect when you’re new to Top Shot can be overwhelming. When you take a look at the marketplace, there can certainly be sticker shock for some Moments. However, keep searching and you’ll see how many Moments are available from as low as $3.00.

Dapper Balance is the most efficient way to buy these digital collectible moments. It might be a good idea at this point to load funds into your Dapper account depending on your budget; even with a modest budget of $100.00 to $200.00, you can get your collection rolling.

Once you make a deposit, it’s important to buy a few Moments to bump your Collector Score to 100. Collector Score (CS) is on the top of your profile and is used as a meter to check account activity. (Tip: 2021 Playoff moments are 20 CS, buying 4 for $6.00 each gets you to over the 100 threshold.) A Collector Score of 100 or more unlocks a nice perk for new users: the ability to purchase an Archive pack. An Archive pack contains retro moments from certain past seasons. Contained in these packs are some of the best players of all time in addition to some outstanding players of that era.

A good place to begin on Top Shot is by looking on the marketplace for one of two things: Your favorite team or your favorite players. Grab a few base commons of each to get your collection rolling.

What Now?

*Note: It is important for each Collector to curate their Top Shot collection to what’s important to them, while at the same time considering marketplace action.*

Here are a few things you can do to stay connected to collecting:

• Work toward collecting all the moments from your favorite team for Series
• While Series 1 Moments are, in many cases, prohibitively expensive, collecting all of a single team’s Moments from a given Series comes with benefits. 23 teams from S2 cost around $200 or less at the moment to complete. You can even collect 2 teams from the bottom of the list for under $200 combined. This will boost your Collector Score (you get a 50% CS bonus for each moment from that team), and it will also give you one avenue to take your collection.

OwnTheMoment is a great third-party site that lets you easily calculate the Collector Score boost of each Moment, as well as the cost to complete different sets.

One note here: collecting two teams specifically can boost your CS significantly (Wolves and Hornets). Their full team sets are quite affordable, and if you collect the full team set for each you get a 150% bonus for all momes of those players in your collection.

Collecting sets is also a great way to put yourself in a position to possibly gain utility.

So far in S3, any full team set holder received an AirDropped Fresh Thread pack. In fact, the Fresh Thread set may be a great first set to start with.

One of the best ways to utilize your collection is to step outside of Top Shot and visit the MomentRanks Play website. This is a daily free contest where you use the Moments in your collection to create a starting lineup (5 players) and compete for prizes using your players’ box scores. It is quick and easy to play. It is basically DFS meets collecting.

Connecting with others in the community

Sometimes the word community can be overused with the NFT world, but when it comes to Top Shot it is one of the drivers of the platform. Whether showing off the pride of your collection, chatting about incoming pack drops, or speculating about future Challenge Rewards, interacting with others via Twitter and Discord makes the experience much better. If you follow the Community Follows list for Top Shot you can follow a bunch of well-known or helpful names in the community. (Don’t forget to follow @packripmedia and @packripewing)

Interacting with Challenges and Buying Future Packs

It is important to stay up to date on the goings-on with Top Shot so that you don’t miss a drop. As a collector, you’ll be able to grab a spot in almost all general queues for common drops. Most drops also have priority queues, which give higher odds of getting a pack to those with higher Collector Scores.

Completing Flash Challenges that are held bi-weekly is exciting. You have to grab certain momes to earn a reward. *Be careful with some challenges: in some cases the moments needed can be very costly compared to the reward earned*

Utilize the tools available to you

Moment Ranks, Own the Moment, and Evaluate Market are three tools for collectors to use to monitor their own account and the value of moments on the platform. Just FYI, if you are using any of these it would be better for yourself to use any data from March on. The early months of 2021 saw values temporarily skyrocket to a degree that most agree won’t happen again any time soon.

Top Shot is fun. Period, full stop.

Of course, because you are spending money investing in Moments there is a financial incentive to maintain your collection well, but this whole experience should be one that you do because you love basketball and want to interact with others that do as well.