Sotheby’s is currently holding an auction for NBA Top Shot digital collectibles, as the NFT market experiences a modest resurgence amidst a broader crypto market boom in recent months.
According to a statement from a company spokesperson on Tuesday, the auction house is selling eight NBA Top Shot NFTs, with each valued between $500 and $3,000. This sale is part of a broader NBA memorabilia sale, and bidding will remain open until January 21.
The NFTs being auctioned off feature several well-known basketball players, including Jaylen Wells, Bub Carrington, Pacôme Dadiet, and Kyshawn George. Each lot includes a highlight clip from the respective player’s first-ever NBA game.
This auction comes at a time when digital art collectibles have experienced a slight rebound, with the trading volume of NFTs increasing in December as certain projects significantly increased in value. However, some of this rise seems to be attributed to buyers attempting to earn crypto rewards around the Pudgy Penguins PENGU token launch. It remains uncertain whether the broader NFT market is experiencing a growing resurgence.
NBA Top Shot was launched in 2020 and sparked an NFT craze among mainstream sports fans in early 2021, although it has since died down considerably.
Although the project reached a monthly sales peak of $226 million in February 2021, the sales of Flow-based NFTs amounted to less than $2 million last month, according to data from CryptoSlam. To date, the collection has generated approximately $1.25 billion in sales.
Sotheby’s has made several ventures into NFTs in recent years, despite a prolonged downturn in the one-of-one token market.
According to its website, in 2021, Sotheby’s collaborated with digital creator Pak and sold nearly $17 million in NFTs. Additionally, last summer, the auction house put up for sale a batch of Ethereum NFTs centered around the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Furthermore, in the previous year, Sotheby’s delved deeper into the Web3 world by launching a secondary marketplace for on-chain NFT sales on its metaverse platform.
Edited by Andrew Hayward.