Community is the most valuable component of the Collectibles industry & Why Authentication is Key to Unleashing the Power

The community is the heart of collectibles. The passion of collecting, the stories, the chase, and the time spent becomes the lifeblood of what collectibles so meaningful and valuable, both to a personal collector, but also as an asset.

I’ve written in the past how the industry is at a pivotal point where so much attention, dollars, and innovation is occurring. From the live platforms Fanatics, Whatnot, DripShop, Instagram, TikTok, and others to emerging breakers who built sizable businesses, with active communities interacting and spending.

But at the core of collecting is the story—the story of how one obtained a collectible. These stories or user journeys are what makes the collectible meaningful. Sure a collectible of a players accomplishment, or a photo of a historical sporting milestone is the genesis of the collectible, but I believe its the community or the fan, in case of sports is a substantial part of the value creation that isn’t being accounted for today.

While this isn’t mathematical, but the Collectibles Life time value (“LTV”) should incorporate these components: 

• Player + 

• Context (rookie, milestone, variation) + 

• Scarcity + 

• Provenance (user journey)

To me the story or provenance might be the biggest value creation of an items value. Right now we have solutions for capturing the first three, but not the journey or provenance. 

A common user journey for how a collector obtains a sports card today is via breaking. Sure one can acquire by other means, but this user flow demonstrates the value of the card’s provenance, where its not being ‘documented’ and authenticated.

Let’s pick an example that I’m intimately aware of — Formula 1 breaks. For F1, the 2020 sets from Topps are the most sought after because they were the first year Topps produced F1 cards for their popular Chrome, Sapphire and Dynasty products. For the chrome product one of the “grails” is Max Verstappen’s Superfractor 1/1. 

This card hasn’t been hit for over 4 years and with a very small print run, the number of remaining cases/boxes in the “wild” meant the odds of hitting increases as product is ripped. 

The 2020 Topps Chrome F1 Max Verstappen Superfractor 1/1

One of the biggest breakers for the F1 community is F1 Castle (https://www.instagram.com/f1castle/) who has a long history doing F1 breaks. Not only does Scott operate a great community, he’s a wealth of knowledge that makes it very accessible for newcomers. He fosters a group that is inclusive and fun. We all know each other, what we collect and what we chase—all of this online. F1 Castle is one of the few breakers that does 2020 breaks, both Chrome and Sapphire which are two of the most expensive breaks given there are some “holy grails” yet to be found, of which is this Max. 

The way his breaks works is that he sells spots by teams. So for example, one can buy the Red Bull spot and gets all cards of Red Bull from that case. 

So F1 Castle has been ripping for years and certain members have been consistently chasing until this break on December 23, 2023.

The 2020 Topps Chrome F1 Max Verstappen Super Fractor Pulled

The culmination of this card being hit could be content in itself that could be documented, but certainly one can start the provenance with the hit date as d0 and track going forward, which is exactly why Community drives so much of the content and why people collect. 

What happens next is the card is graded, but given the potential value of this card that has some estimates at $250K+ raw, this card needs to be hand delivered. And that is exactly what happens. Scott flies out to California to hand deliver it to PSA for grading same day. See the video below that documents the journey. But what makes it this much more special is that the night before, he lets a bunch of the community members, of which I’m one, that he is doing a get together the night before for dinner. We all gather to have dinner and get our in person of the holy grail card. This is what the hobby is about. We had a blast and even ripped some 2020 Topps F1 Sapphire at the table. All of this is part of this cards’ story and value in my view. 

WATCH the Videos to see why the Community is key to a card's provenance.

Getting the card graded with the Community

The next day they meet PSA to get the card graded and here is there reveal

Even the video of its reveal or even the grader doing the assessment could be part of the documentary or Provence.

Once graded, Scott goes to Melbourne, Australia to the Grand Prix to meet the owner who hit the card, and by the way, also hit earlier the 2020 Topps F1 Dynasty Lewis Hamilton Flag patch — talk about on a heater.

Hand Delivering to the Owner in Australia during the Australian Grand Prix!

This card in itself is a monster hit, but the journey its been on with the community makes it that much more special of a card because it involved the community, not just the person who got it. 

There are similar stories of this happening even for smaller big hits but the power of the industry is the community — the community created the journey and its so valuable to a collectibles value. Right now there is no solution to Authenticate this journey. 

How does a collectible’s journey from case, to box, to rip, to sharing it was found, to grading, to sale, to sale again or soon, to being used to open up gaming or access to other things get ‘attached’ to the grade. Grading gives the grade of the quality but what I think is a big value not captured is the “grading” of the card’s journey or provenance.

This is why I’m so excited for what Top Tier Authentics is doing. 

With their technology a solution to authenticate experiences is a big unlock for the Collectibles industry and others where fans and people have collective experiences. 

Once you have experience authentication, it unlocks so many new utility possibilities. From  authenticating a break and a card’s journey with the community, to using a collectible being used as access for other experiences, games, or even additional breaks. This journey can’t happen unless there is verification of attendance or participation. Authentication is in v1 where a card is graded on its quality. The future is leveraging community’s ability to create content and enhance a collectibles value, but authentication v2.0 needs to happen.

We are close to having breaks authenticated, participants in the stream when a Hit happens get verification of attendance, to allowing community events to authenticate their activities to attach to a card’s provenance.

This unlocks utility possibilities — a collectible can now be a ticket to gain access and post event verification of attendance. The collectible can now be attached to a community where the community can continue to add to the collectible by verification of attendance of the break and those derivatives can then have different paths created by the community, but all go back to the genesis collectible. Its only possible when you can verify the item, authenticate it, verify attendance in a experience and verify that as the meta wrapper authentication. This would make the experience authentication senior to the item authentication.

Then, if you integrate what Fanatics is trying to do with its events, which I LOVE, you can now even have a scenario of a gallery of Hits of the year, no different that a museum would have a an exhibit. You now start to have content being created on behalf of your item by participating in events or showcased with perpetual authentication as the collectible experiences new owners and events.

Now imagine Fanatics-con allows athletes to then get their hands on their own card — now you can capture that Max Verstappen has held his Superfractor and that moment is attached to the provenance. Or he takes it on a test lap at the Australian Grand Prix. You can now see the possibilities that can be unlocked by community to further create collectibles power.

The community is the hub to create this flywheel of content creation, but can only be harnessed if there is experiential authentication.

This is the potential unlocked with Top Tier Authentics.

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