Like many, I’d been hearing about NFTs for a while and at first it didn’t make sense— and then I was able to wrap my head around it. I’ve always been a collector, so it got my interest. I also play with crypto some so I drank up some rather complicated explanations which I’m sure are a turn off to many.

I became aware that Weezer were going to make NFTs available and with “packs” being $20 (and that I’m a Weezer fan), it seemed like a good opportunity to jump in. I converted some of my Bitcoin into WAX which is the currency of the exchange where the Weezer NFTs were to be launched. This turned out to be an unnecessary step as they actually didn’t accept WAX as payment when they went on sale (though it is the exclusive currently to buy them after the initial sale).

The WAX platform also hosts MLB baseball cards which launched only a month or so earlier so I felt confident this was a legit platform to invest in. I got a couple of virtual baseball cards for my collection, but buying a pack of cards was prohibitively expensive at about $100 for a pack of 6 or about $1000 for a pack of 45 cards. Why so much? Because when they went on sale the system was brought to its knees by frustrated customers slamming the system to get one of the few thousand packs being made available. What happens right away is that people take their packs to the marketplace and mark them up for secondary sale. It may have felt like a rip off to buy a $5 pack for $10 or $15 bucks that afternoon when you had hoped to pay retail, but now that prices have increased by 10X, it would be an amazing bargain today.

So it is that mindset that people attacked the Weezer NFT sale. Investors bought all they could and flipped them, but with many having no real interest in the band. These were not fans, they were just people that have fun, opening packs, and buying and selling NFTs. The Weezer fan base did not appear to be present as many packs were not opened and items of common rarity were available for less than $1 by the end of the day.

On the Discord channel WAX has for Weezer, there is a lot of speculation that Weezer don’t have fans (quantitatively untrue with over 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone) or that they have some disdain for the carbon footprint related to the underlying blockchain technology. However, I think it is a simple numbers game. There is a relatively small population of users on the platform at this stage. And it can seem intimidating to “get in”. I’ll post some step-by-step to help anyone overwhelmed by the many complicated and non-specific instructions I’ve come across.

For the the relatively popular non-sports cards and gaming cards in the marketplace, demand seems nominal. This has always been the case for sports cards versus non-sports cards in the physical world as well. But what I’m trying to say is that the number of Weezer fans, or Michael Jackson fans, or Metallica fans, etc. that have gotten onboard with the NFT craze is just a small percentage today, but one that will undoubtedly increase.

I have to feel that with the very successful MLB market and a very good user experience (except on days popular packs drop) the fans will find there way here and the value will increase with the demand they bring.

So I’d encourage fans to get to the market quickly as prices seem insanely low. A standard pack was $20 by credit card on launch day, but now are only about $17 [cheapest packs as of now]! As of March 1st (less than a week after they launched on April 28th) you can get the cheapest common listed at just 0.48 WAX ($0.13), the collectible rarity at 0.90 WAX ($0.24), rare (with a minting of under 2k) at just 5 WAX ($1.32). I got at least of of all of those (there are 12 total, one for each song on their album). Now I’m snatching up the rarity designated “Delux” which has a minting of just 475 and the cheapest is up right now at only 22.78 WAX ($6.00). That is insane. With moderate demand, these should be at least 10X that price. So come get them while they are cheap!

There is one more rarity I’m not getting for obvious reasons: Ultra Rare. There is only one of these for each of the 12 designs/songs and having one means you are entitled to the actual physical item. The cheapest of those is $4,000 at the moment, but some of the others are nearly $20,000. Only 5 are listed in the market as I write this. I expect these will drop to more reasonable prices once the date to collect the physical item passes (which I heard is in June). That said, only about half of them have been opened, so there are still a few in sealed packs somewhere yet to be found. Possibly in one of my packs?

I’ll open one now…

So, no Ultra Rare, but I was pleasantly surprised to get that Delux item. It was one I had already purchased and is only about $8 at the moment; but when it gets more mainstream and the fans come, I expect that to increase by 5X or more. I’ll have to revisit this article in the future to judge my prediction here!