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Since it went live in November 2020, I’ve been collecting Blankos characters from blockchain game Blankos Block Party.
To-date, 78 distinct characters have been sold, given away or made available via Battle Pass, and somehow I’ve ended up owning over 70. My total collection of discreet Blankos NFT is now into three figures, and spending well into five figures.
Later this week, I expect I’ll be in the queue for the newest Blankos - Lady Ishi; priced at $45 and limited to 2,000 units.
And I’m not sure why?
Gotta collect ‘em all
Early in a project this sort of collecting behavior just creeps up on you. When there were less than 20 Blankos, of course I was going to own them all.
They were so cute and well animated. As well as collecting them, you can use them to flex in Blankos Block Party, a UGC world consisting of mini-games such as racing and shooting.
But, even then, I understood the cadence of new characters meant it would be almost impossible to collect them all. That’s also guaranteed given the two rarest Blankos (given away pre-launch) are currently on sale in the marketplace for $5 million a piece.
The next rarest are priced at $10,000 and $4,750; potentially in reach but more of a thoughtful decision than Lady Ishi.
And one year on, it’s a time for more thoughtful decisions. For, as much as I enjoy collecting Blankos, I’d be a liar to say financial concerns don’t eventually come into play.
Indeed, my real obsession has probably been trying to better understand the product’s market dynamics.
Every day (give or take) since July, I’ve been plotting the floor price for each Blankos and trying to make sense of it all.
One key facet of discussion is what happens when a blockchain game runs on its own custom blockchain, particularly one without bridges to other blockchains? An Ethereum bridge to Blankos’ custom EOS-based private chain has been promised but hasn’t yet materialized.
Related is the decision of developer Mythical Games to adopt full compliance with US crypto regulations including charging US tax (around 17%) on every transaction.
It’s really weird, and definitely a drain on ROI, but maybe that’s the way the sector is going to develop; Forte and Ubisoft are taking a similar gated approach.
Not being as crypto-open as other projects has also limited liquidity inflows — particularly for the more expensive Blankos - as well as created issues in terms of what level of access users from different countries have experienced.
When the Blankos’ marketplace launched, only players in the UK, US, Germany and Canada could buy and sell NFTs. It was then opened up more generally but apart from those four countries, other users could only buy NFTs, not sell.
The obvious result was the floor price of Blankos rose considerably, peaking at over 500% ROI compared to each NFT’s original sale price. Equally logical, when all accounts were finally allowed to also sell NFTs, prices pretty much returned to where they had originally been.
Price volatility since November has been muted although ROI compared to each Blankos’ original sale price remains over 100%.
In retrospect, I should have been more aggressive in terms of selling at the top of market, at least in terms of my Blankos multiples. I did start, albeit in a limited way, and sold eight NFTs at 231% ROI post-tax, Of course, it all went back into the system to acquire better examples.
And that’s been my biggest surprise from the experience so far. While I didn’t expect to collect as many Blankos as I have, I certainly didn’t expect to start collecting them in terms of their serial numbers.
PFP NFTs such as Bored Apes are all unique in terms of their artwork, but Blankos are not. There are 78 discrete characters, each of which exists in a varying number, dependant on their minting conditions, typically either time limited or hard capped.
For example, there is only one Golden Ticket, hence the $5 million price tag, whereas the just-completed Amazon Prime drop — King Karat — has been redeemed and minted 45,022 times making it the most common Blankos by far. It’s also the cheapest with a floor price of $4.
But you can pay more if you want. King Karat serial number #1 can bought on the marketplace for $18,500, while #2 is $3,500 and #3 is $2,500.
And that’s where my real obsession has developed; working out comparative pricing across discreet NFTs as well as within an NFT set via serial number — two things that are related on the macro level but non-linear comparatively.
You end up with brain ache and scatterplots like this.
And that’s actually been a valuable process.
No matter what eventually happens with Blankos, I’ve only made a couple of truly bad micro decisions (bad FOMO), and learned you can get great bargains when people price NFT based on their serial numbers.
It won’t mean anything to you that I acquired #5 Box B for $555 but it gives me a buzz even now.
Nevertheless, the significant things I’ve learned about Blankos haven’t been the details about:
the velocity of this project (and its many flaws),
general thoughts on trading and collecting NFTs,
a reinforced enthusiasm for increasing decentralization,
or even the benefits of applied psychology in price anchoring.
It’s been that this stuff is fundamentally fascinating in-and-of-itself — at least it is to me.
Of course, monetary rewards are relevant too but quickly that becomes more about enabling deeper access to this and other projects.
And that’s my wider conclusion.
Dangerous as it is to base too much on one’s own navel, over time, I think we’re going to end up with gamers collecting and owning vast libraries of this sort of stuff, most of which will be financially worthless most of the time, albeit with potential sentimental value.
Small amounts will be financially valuable, but — as with my Blankos collection — not necessarily considered as a primarily financial asset, although potentially available as a resource to cash out if required.
In that way, liquidity depth will likely trump ROI heights. Maybe I need to start another graph!