I think it’s case-by-case basis and the terms of the agreements are probably never fully disclosed. This is where a ton of the money is so the licensing arm of the business is really complicated. NFL has two licenses: one for league trademarks/logos and the NFLPA for player likenesses. Not sure about NBA but I assume it’s similar. The licensees are completely at the mercy of the leagues, so if Dapper has, say, a one-year license and the NBA decides not to renew then…? If the actual media is only unlocked on Dapper servers and not actually contained in the token, then what happens when Dapper no longer has an NBA/NBPA license? If that’s how it works, it’s hard for me to imagine they could continue serving that content with no license without getting sued but IANAL.
It’s avatar turtles all the way down.
I dunno, is there any case law on this? Afaict, the “product” you’re buying is basically an auth token to session unlock digital content served from a content delivery network. Of course, anyone can download the clips (or the entire page), even the $100k ones which is why this is so LOL. Maybe @Yuv can answer this, but I don’t think the token serves you up anything that a public view of the HTML won’t give you? Now if the token itself contains all of the information to reconstruct the “product” that’s different but I don’t think that’s how it works? It basically just looks like the digital version of Adopt a Whale / Adopt a Star.
While I don’t get the appeal of digital collectibles (talking about things that have no worth in and of themselves, not stuff like characters or items that can be used in a game), they have one massive advantage over physical collectibles: storage.
As my parents are in their mid-upper 70’s, I’ve of course had to have those uncomfortable talks about their wills, power of attorney, etc. I have a packet that my dad put together with info about every account, person I’ll need to contact, locations of passwords, etc., when that day comes.
One of the most difficult things for us to figure out is what to do with all of our baseball cards. My family collected tons of them in the 1980s and 90s. My dad has a couple cabinets in the basement full of binders plus shelves of unopened complete sets that he would pre-order every year for several years. It’s way too expensive to ship them to me (we’ve thought about taking the pages out of the binders to at least save some weight and room), so he’s thinking that he might have to just pack the car full of baseball cards and drive them down. And then there’s the issue of where the hell I’m going to put them.
Having everything on a USB stick would be kind of nice.
EDIT: And yes, my parents also have a lot of Beanie Babies and bobble heads, but that’s just because they enjoyed collecting them, not because they saw them as an investment. The bobbles are pretty much all giveaways from sporting events. My dad even has a really good one of himself that I’ve called dibs on.
The honest answer is most of them should just go in the garbage dump. I had 10s of thousands of cards from the 80s/90s era at one point and sold the few that had any value, then dumped the rest.
Don’t throw them away - donate them. Places like children’s hospitals, Boys and Girls clubs, will often take them. Might even get a small tax deduction.
Which doesn’t mean you have no valuable cards, but it sounds like it’s going to require a significant amount of time for dollar equity that’s probably in the hundreds. I recently trashed a bunch of junk wax keeping only ones I thought could have value (Jordans, HOF rookies) and that I like or plan to use in artworks (holograms, stickers, and shutter cards).
My baseball card dream has always been to score an authentic Ten Million for a bargain price, but alas with all of the $$$ tech bros hyping cards now it feels like it will never happen.
My brother and I collected cards in the early-mid 80’s just for fun, like most kids did. My dad would buy us packs on the way home from work (and Topps baseball stickers) and we would have fun trying to collect all the Brewers.
Then we learned that cards were worth something, so I took the rubber bands off of my cards to see if I had Wade Boggs rookies (I had a bunch). That’s when we started going to card shows and pre-ordering complete sets. We didn’t buy anything expensive, mostly just had fun seeing all the old cards and collecting some in case they were worth something some day. Plus, Brewers players were often there signing autographs.
This was the card I wanted for years, mainly because it was Clemente and it was funny-looking. It wasn’t worth much, but even for me at the time, like $12 or $15 was a lot. I finally bought it for a few bucks and was so happy:
Another observation on the recent card bubble: this isn’t about collecting, it’s about degens getting a fix. If you’ve watched any of these recent PULLS you already know this. The Panini premium boxes cost like a grand each. Wanna see grown men cry? I got you:
The thing I hate is the commons. They are just filler to hype the sweat on the back end. Absolutely nobody cares about commons and they’ll all eventually end up in a landfill. Hearing these guys fake an “Ah, Kent Bazemore. Solid player.” just kills me. With the digitals, there’s no reason why every card can’t be a one of a kind, but I guess it also wouldn’t be immediately obvious if the card was insanely valuable either.
They need to incorporate the packs into DFS to attract these Youtube degens. Would add some strategy and be more of a CCG deck game. Could even tie the card rareness/value to nightly performance. Say everybody gets access to the commons, but on each entry you get one pack with some special feature cards that alter the rules slightly. Like maybe a Clint Capela STAINED GLASS costs 1.5x salary for 1.5x points but does something crazy if he MVPs the slate like he did the other night. And then that card becomes christened (Clint Capela MVP STAINED GLASS) and can be traded as a digital rare. I want the guys firing $1k bullets on cardboard back in the games.
I just bought my first card ever. A Dwight Howard that has 2500 copies. Embiid is out today and the matchup against the Pistons is great for him, so I’m hoping for a big game and a flip.
I actually tried to buy a certain # of that card and after 3 minute of ‘processing’ i got a fuck you error message. looked back and a RotoGrinders tout stole it from me.
My theory is that there are tons of morons like myself who are willing to try it out for $100 or so but there are no packs to buy until at least Thursday, so you gotta start with someone. No one wants complete standard commons, so maybe a limited Dwight might work if he gets a big game today.
Why are the packs so limited? Seems like the optimal play is to sell max packs now before people realize it’s a Ponzi scheme. I’d def buy packs just for the novelty factor but not willing to do another PS5/StockX thing where it’s always sold out and you have to react within 1 millisecond.
