Why are you here anon?
Are you here for the tech, for the art or are you here for the quick flip?
Doesn’t matter which one you are, you still have to read this.
It is related to the collectability, its provenance and social status.
Collectability refers to something that has significance and is in demand by collectors. In simple terms: “looks rare!”.
Provenance refers to the origin of the art, how likely it is actually drawn by the famous artist.
Social status refers to the high status it would confer the collector for collecting this piece.
It is about the floor price, basically, the higher, the more collectable. (That is also very true in the traditional world, although pricing data is not so transparent)
As well as who else is collecting it.
Obviously if you are sharing a collection with another 5000 other paper hands “investors” who will readily take tiny 1 ETH flip profits, you are NGMI (never gonna make it). I would prefer to call ourselves collectors of digital art and consumers of a digital product.
It is a Veblen good after all. In simple english, the more expensive it is, the more collectable it becomes.
See this piece for example, it is drawn by one of the most famous digital artist @XCOPYART and collected by one of the most famous influencer @CozomoMedici which explains the price.
I’m pretty sure 99.999% of the world is priced out of this.
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d/7
So when an “open" edition was launched, everyone flocked to it.
https://twitter.com/Zeneca/status/1620815250260983809?s=20&t=A_Rbbw32U-x-CpCh3_EvvA
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xd1169e5349d1cB9941F3DCbA135C8A4b9eACFDDE/171000100434
Although this piece was minted 7394 times, and each collector had an exact identical copy, the price still managed to go parabolic. And I believe it will continue to go up in the future.
If you want to check out other Veblen NFT art to collect, you can go ahead and check the following website out.
If you have enough ETH to buy art from the top of that list, I think you probably can stop reading this article now, and instead teach me how to do so.
Now back to the so called “open editions”.
https://twitter.com/amber_vittoria/status/1618851072688406529?s=20&t=A_Rbbw32U-x-CpCh3_EvvA
YES @amber_vittoria is 100% spot on. The current editions are actually timed editions. Open editions are actually open forever, and they should be collected purely just as art.
In a true open forever edition, there should be no way the demand will outstrip the supply, since the supply is unlimited.
However, in most of the cases we are talking about a time limited edition.
I can understand why most people are bearish on them since the demand will not likely outstrip supply in the short term.
However in the long term, I am pretty sure some of them are going to do extremely well.
Perhaps I can suggest a possible scenario where that happens.
Say today a new budding digital artist starts to sell his 1 of 1 digital art. He/she has a great art style and has a great story to tell; but somehow the art just doesn’t reach the intended audience and cannot gain traction.
In fact that is the trajectory of most great artists. We can look at the story of Vincent Van Gogh for example. Often times, society is just not ready to accept their art yet.
So, this digital artist releases time limited editions to make some money to scrape by. Astute collectors will go ahead and mint them cheap for a couple of bucks to support these artists.
Flippers that try to flip it for some ETH will instantly be burnt since society does not recognise these art yet, and will have to sell below the mint price.
But through multiple open editions and 1 of 1s, the artist start to understand which art are more popular and more conversations ensue.
Fast forward a couple of years when this artist begins to be featured at small art auction houses initially, then later the bigger art auction houses.
If the collector had patience to keep these pieces, I’m pretty sure they would have at least made 10x in a couple of years. And that is not too bad.
Of course most of them are going to become zero, but hey, what did you lose except a couple of bucks? Besides, nobody forced you to mint them and mint so many copies.
Perhaps you can take some guidelines from these guys in the traditional art world?
Right artist, right time, right price.
Mid career artists that is on a growing trajectory appears to be the sweet spot. Too young might be too risky. Too established might be too expensive, or so called “priced in”. Mid career would offer the greatest growth in the portfolio since the general public has yet to “discover them”.
The right time, is the time before the artist or subjects portrayed becomes “in the spotlight”. Or in crypto speak, right before it moons.
And most importantly, taking a long term perspective. These guys in the traditional world typically hold their assets for 5 to 10 years, and they cost money to hold due to storage fees.
We cannot even hold a jpeg in our wallet which doesn’t cost anything to hold for more than 5 minutes.
Art is the greatest utility of NFTs, feel free to disagree with me. Art is the greatest bubble that has never burst. This will be the topic of my upcoming article! Until next time!
https://twitter.com/liamdnft/status/1620198583151792128
https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1619743961526206464?s=20&t=o-klMfNc43y2VDwysWTvJQ
https://twitter.com/Zeneca_33/status/1620811501652123648?s=20&t=w2jPLyL7_QvJcx1Ytamtcw
https://www.citivelocity.com/citigps/global-art-market/
https://mirror.xyz/angyts.eth/vg2X8J-ifp0H8WFDoGXfletuhmECZIRBhYCUEjuJqxg