The sports collectibles that we used to buy and trade back in school were amongst the most demanded and loved activities that took part in schools. The thrill associated with owning cards of the best basketball, football, cricket and baseball stars was something that kids took immense pride in. According to verified market research the global sports trading card market was valued at a whopping 13.82 billion dollars in 2019 and is estimated to reach 98.75 billion dollars by 2027 with a compounded annual growth rate upwards of 23% from now till 2027. The market leaders in the segment of physical sports cards have been Futera, Leaf trading cards, Panini SPA, Topps, upper deck company and a few others. The estimated high growth rates and the newly sparked interest in sports collectibles is likely to attract bigger players looking to enter into this market. This industry has seen growth off-late due to some reasons including the efficient use of social media to create a hype and anticipation around such collectibles and also boredom during the pandemic times. A PSA 9 mantle grabbed attention when it was sold for a stunning 5.2 million USD in January which overtook the previous record sale valued at 3.9 million USD of the 2009 Bowman Chrome Superfractor autographed card of Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout. These numbers are a clear indicator of the zeal in this segment.
The numbers shown above are indeed ones that allure investors and make the trading of these sports cards an interesting investment opportunity.
New age technology like blockchain and NFT’s can help the concept of collectibles reach new heights by eliminating barriers like location, currency difference, quality, condition, legitimacy amongst others. Physical collectibles have a ton of issues, the wear and tear, quality of the card itself, easy availability of copies et cetera.
Question: So how can technology help solve this problem?
Answer: The use of digital collectibles instead of traditional card-based ones can eliminate the issues mentioned above. Here’s how-
Location- internet is everywhere, people can buy and sell digital collectibles using the internet at home and conveniently own their favourite collectible by the click of a few buttons.
Currency difference- Using decentralized cryptocurrencies can eliminate this issue altogether. The use of fiat currency to purchase crypto and then use that to buy the desired form of collectibles can help avoid the problems associated with cross currency transactions.
Quality and condition- In the case of physical sports collectibles, the cards are made from paper and are subject to degradation over time owing to the conditions under which they are kept, geographical location etc. Moreover, it being a physical commodity, physical damage due to certain unforeseen circumstances are always a possibility. Use of digital collectibles can surely eradicate this problem for good.
Legitimacy- When certain items are in high demand, many fakes of it come into the market and the source of these cannot be determined leading to widespread loss of value. This can be overcome by the use of officially licensed collectibles with authenticity certificates and other forms of security mentioned below.
Now that we know how digital collectibles can enhance the collectibles experience in the future, let’s see how a sustainable and efficient solution can be devised for such sports collectibles.
A possible one is the use of blockchain technology to mint NFT’s and build online marketplaces for the buying, selling and trading of digital sports collectibles.
Blockchain is a concept wherein the pieces of information are contained in the form of blocks and are all interlinked, which ensures the security of information and prevents hacking as well. Using this tech to build non-fungible tokens that are officially licensed by sports stars themselves makes the whole legitimacy issue seem ignorable and small. They would be listed in dedicated marketplaces with only verified sellers (as seen on ITSMYNE) which would make the card much more trustworthy which in turn would increase its value. Being a digital version, they are also free from the worry of wear and tear, quality degradation and also solve the location barrier problem.
As seen above, officially licensed digital collectibles solve all the problems pertaining to the existing collectibles situation. Naturally this attracts the attention of investors and is likely to dominate this sector in the future. NFT’s in general are gaining an immense amount of traction owing to the plethora of issues they have the potential to resolve. A dedicated marketplace for just sports fans to buy and sell licensed collectibles is what ITSMYNE is working towards. The marketplace would make the overall experience easy-to-use one for all. NFT’s for sports collectibles has already become a huge market with some mammoth transactions that have taken place recently in the sporting world. This again is a positive indication and is surely hinting towards a boom in this market in the near future. The issues with this system now are mainly the energy consumption and the difficult onboarding process, both of which are being worked on tediously, which would naturally lead to them being overcome and a sustainable, easy and environmental friendly system would prevail.
