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Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs. What I should have said is t

by nfw2 5y ago

Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs. What I should have said is that it seems a lot of people dismiss NFTs with a certainty that doesn't seem justified considering there are other collectibles like baseball cards without any inherently valuable physical properties that have retained their value long-term. I honestly don't know anything about the sneaker world besides that it exists, so that shouldn't have been my example.

nfw2 5y ago
I actually think there is an interesting and nuanced conversation to be had on what fundamentally is different between an NFT and a baseball card. But that doesn't seem to be the conversation anyone is having.
- manojlds 5y ago
  I have been thinking of this as well. Pokemon cards as NFT would work, but why would the Pokemon company (the central entity) be ok with having a decentralised solution for it? What does the company get? NFTs need support of the big names but they already have better solutions for what they want. Currently NFTs are creating their own set of *mon cards but I don't see why I would want that. Another example - currently digital games aren't resellable and NFTs could solve that problem. But why would Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc want that?
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    A couple of things to note here: - New brands are created all the time; you don't have to be Nintendo to do so. maybe you get bought be Nintendo after. - Big brands ultimately still need to go where the customers are. - What the blockchain gives your digital good is a sense of permanence. This may not matter for an individual purchaser who simply wants to speculate in a hot market, but there would be no such market if the ownership ledger was run by single company. The narrative that these ownership records exists on a blockchain that will survive any particular startup failing underpins the whole thing.
- telxosser 5y ago
  Well one major difference is that a person could ruin their cards or bend them. There is also the grading system and you can't really make the card go up in grade, just down. The whole boom in the 80s really started because boomers came into their prime earning years. When they were kids baseball cards were mostly to put in their bike spokes to make a clicking noise or thrown around so cards in great shape were in short supply. Most importantly though they were not coins or stamps that their parents collected. I use to listen to a radio show 5 years ago for card collecting that the whole show was basically people calling in and the host telling them the cards were not worth anything. This past year though is the all time high for sports cards but we already well off the peak. The problem with NFTs is they came along at the peak of the everything bubble so the prices have nothing to do with reality. Digital collectibles make perfect sense and are no less goofy than anything else people collect. Not something I would ever buy but ultimately nothing is as goofy as the price of an original Mark Rothko painting. To me that is the gold standard of collectibles and the rationality of the collectibles market.
girvo 5y ago
> I honestly don't know anything about the sneaker world besides that it exists, so that shouldn't have been my example. Fair enough! As a neat entry point into it: the sneaker reseller world is incredibly high tech: the bot platforms make huge amounts of money and have quite good UX these days. Impressive bits of tech, even if I despise what they're used for.
jboy55 5y ago
Baseball cards now have value, in the period of 1990 to 2000 they were pretty worthless after the bubble of the late 80s crashed. They retain value though nostalgia, as soon as they become an investment again, and speculation starts, a new bubble will build, with a crash following.
telxosser 5y ago
Totally agree. Sport card collecting is just as ridiculous as the concept of NFTs. A piece of thin cardboard changing in value based on a guy hitting more home runs. Stamps and coins are the WW2 generation version of all this. Practically everyone has their own personal form of gambling and at the same time everyone believes all the other forms of gambling are foolish.

by nfw2 5y ago

nfw2 5y ago

I actually think there is an interesting and nuanced conversation to be had on what fundamentally is different between an NFT and a baseball card. But that doesn't seem to be the conversation anyone is having.

manojlds 5y ago
I have been thinking of this as well. Pokemon cards as NFT would work, but why would the Pokemon company (the central entity) be ok with having a decentralised solution for it? What does the company get? NFTs need support of the big names but they already have better solutions for what they want. Currently NFTs are creating their own set of *mon cards but I don't see why I would want that. Another example - currently digital games aren't resellable and NFTs could solve that problem. But why would Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc want that?
- miracle2k 5y ago
  A couple of things to note here: - New brands are created all the time; you don't have to be Nintendo to do so. maybe you get bought be Nintendo after. - Big brands ultimately still need to go where the customers are. - What the blockchain gives your digital good is a sense of permanence. This may not matter for an individual purchaser who simply wants to speculate in a hot market, but there would be no such market if the ownership ledger was run by single company. The narrative that these ownership records exists on a blockchain that will survive any particular startup failing underpins the whole thing.
telxosser 5y ago
Well one major difference is that a person could ruin their cards or bend them. There is also the grading system and you can't really make the card go up in grade, just down. The whole boom in the 80s really started because boomers came into their prime earning years. When they were kids baseball cards were mostly to put in their bike spokes to make a clicking noise or thrown around so cards in great shape were in short supply. Most importantly though they were not coins or stamps that their parents collected. I use to listen to a radio show 5 years ago for card collecting that the whole show was basically people calling in and the host telling them the cards were not worth anything. This past year though is the all time high for sports cards but we already well off the peak. The problem with NFTs is they came along at the peak of the everything bubble so the prices have nothing to do with reality. Digital collectibles make perfect sense and are no less goofy than anything else people collect. Not something I would ever buy but ultimately nothing is as goofy as the price of an original Mark Rothko painting. To me that is the gold standard of collectibles and the rationality of the collectibles market.

girvo 5y ago

> I honestly don't know anything about the sneaker world besides that it exists, so that shouldn't have been my example. Fair enough! As a neat entry point into it: the sneaker reseller world is incredibly high tech: the bot platforms make huge amounts of money and have quite good UX these days. Impressive bits of tech, even if I despise what they're used for.

jboy55 5y ago

Baseball cards now have value, in the period of 1990 to 2000 they were pretty worthless after the bubble of the late 80s crashed. They retain value though nostalgia, as soon as they become an investment again, and speculation starts, a new bubble will build, with a crash following.

telxosser 5y ago

Totally agree. Sport card collecting is just as ridiculous as the concept of NFTs. A piece of thin cardboard changing in value based on a guy hitting more home runs. Stamps and coins are the WW2 generation version of all this. Practically everyone has their own personal form of gambling and at the same time everyone believes all the other forms of gambling are foolish.