thecoinrepublic.com
- The NFT of a Greek-Nigerian professional basketball player sold for $187K on Sorare NBA.
- Sorare is famous for its NFT-based fantasy soccer game, but has since added Major League Baseball and NBA spinoffs.
Sorare NBA is an officially licensed and NFT-driven fantasy basketball game. This Sunday, it has set a record when a NFT of Giannis Antetokounmpo aka “Greek Freak,” sold for $187K.
Greek Freak NFT Card
The NFT of Giannis Antetokounmpo is single-edition and was auctioned off through Sorare NBA’s own Ethereum-based platform this Sunday. It sold for about 113.888 ETH or $187K. It almost tripled the USD sale price of previous peak sale that was of Anthony Davis NFT. According to CryptoSlam data, that NFT sold for more than $62K or around 49 ETH at the time.
The Greek Freak dominated over the weekend AGAIN.
— SorareNBA (@SorareNBA) February 6, 2023
A 35-point triple double against the Heat gave Giannis 72 Sorare: NBA points to lead Game Week 31. 🦌😤 pic.twitter.com/9Qs8Yqs8cl
It can be seen that this is the largest-known sale of any Greek Freak NFT. Additionally, on NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs’ video collectibles platform on the Flow blockchain, the largest on-chain sale for the NBA championship-winning Bucks star us $95K in a transaction from February 2021. And it is also linked for the 16th largest on-chain Top Shot sale to date.
Still, if compared with the physical trading card sales, the Sorare NBA’s best can’t compare to the athlete’s top mark. As an autographed Greek Freak rookie card along with a piece of game-worn jersey embedded into the card and sold for more than $1.8 Million in September 2020. For a short time, it held the record for the most expensive basketball trading card sale.
Sorare NBA sale is important for a platform that was launched in October. While NBA Top Shot has not witnessed an NFT sale that high in around two years.
According to DappRadar, the NFT market experienced a 38% increase in January in month-over-month organic trading volume. This also suggests a growing momentum for NFT space.
Notably, the sports cards have been traded widely for decades and the prices for top cards also increased even after the pandemic situation of COVID-19. In addition, the most expensive card ever sold was a 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card that was auctioned for $12.6 Million in August 2022. And the present top basketball card sale is a Steph Curry card that sold for $5.9 Million in July 2021.
The sports collectibles have been an important use case for NFTs that represent the ownership in a unique item. It can be used for things such as digital trading cards, artwork, profile pictures and video games items. While the NFT market scored around $25 billion worth of organic NFT sales over each of the last two years.
NBA Top Shot allows the users to buy, sell, and collect NBA NFTs that present influential “Moments,” minted on the FLOW blockchain. It helped to introduce NFTs into the mainstream in 2021 and generated more than $1 Billion to date in secondary market sales. The massive sales of NFT took place in early months of 2021. And NBA Top Shot’s highest single NFT sale took place in April 2021, when a LeBron James collectible sold for almost $388K in an off-chain auction house transaction.