GM

skipped yesterday's newsletter to attend nft nyc and it ended up being literally one of the worst days of weather the city has seen in years

never leaving my room again

Links for the Top 25 drops are HERE.

Anime art flying under the radar

I recently found a cool marketplace called Sealed.art that I think is worth sharing with you. 

It’s built by robek_world and 0xngmi, who seem like genuine art lovers (as you can tell in their ultra-long manifesto). 

Quick little (unpaid) review

1. It’s an Anime Paradise

If you’ve ever wondered where all the anime cryptoartists have been hanging out these days, this looks like the spot. 

Part of it trickles down from the founder Robek, who has been one of the most important anime collectors in the last few years. This has spread organically turning sealed into an oasis for the genre. 

There’s a good chance the next big anime artist starts here. 

2. Auctions auctions auctions 

You may not know this, but I’m an auction nerd, which honestly is one of the worst kinds of nerds you can be in this life, even lower than sourdough bread and craft beer enthusiasts. 

So anyone pioneering new auction formats and mechanics is a friend of mine. 

And Sealed has a few cool innovations: 

• Vickrey Auctions: An auction format where everyone bids without knowing anyone else’s bids and the highest bidder wins but pays the second-highest bid price. I think this is the first platform to ever try this, and apparently it leads to more bargains for collectors, although I still love the drama of bidding wars in English auctions. 

• Scheduled bids: You can set up bots to place bids on auctions without you needing to be there, and bids are gasless as well. 

• Auction chat: For trolling fellow bidders, naturally. 

3. Just an overall great display interface

The team is aiming for a distraction-free viewing experience. Fewer words, more art. 

I think they’ve created something solid here, especially on mobile, where different formats and dimensions scroll seamlessly and make you realize how limited other popular platforms feel. 

And yes, I know that you, O Most Intellectual Reader, enjoy rich context and storytelling with your art every now and then, and that’s probably what you seek in this newsletter, but I think it’s good to have places that simply offer you a visual feast as well. 

Bottom line

I give it…a salute emoji sandwiched between two thumbs-up emojis.

👍 🫡 👍 

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Fallen Gravity by Mad Dog Jones

A multimedia drop of cosmic proportions continues with this space-themed collection by Mad Dog Jones.

Beginning with Inverted Dark Matter, an ongoing open edition with a matching physical patch, we now have the upcoming mints Infinite Depth and Unknowable Dimensions.

The former is a limited edition with a matching physical print, while the latter is a collection of 1/1s containing unique songs that get you a personalized Flight Certificate from the International Space Station.

So, to recap: three digital art collections, a patch, a print, songs, and space flight certificates. Don’t ever let ‘em tell you it’s just jpegs.

Mecha by mpkoz

Avant Arte hopes to maintain its near yearlong streak of physical + digital sellouts with Mecha, a collection of 1/1s by Michael Kozlowski, a.k.a. mpkoz.

This continues the artist’s immersion in photorealistic painting with generative art (also seen in previous work like Metropolis), now focusing on texture.

If you’re an existing mpkoz fan, you’ll probably like this one. It’s an abstract party of lights and colors – and what they’ve managed to do with textures on the physicals looks impressive.

The Block by Leo Caillard

Following the wild 8 BTC sale of The Runestone last month, its internationally-exhibited artist Leo Caillard is now doing his own Ordinals collection.

Details are limited, but the collection involves the Runestone brand and is teasing a digital + physical angle involving marble blocks (the artist’s signature material). Of course, Runestone holders are whitelisted.

Hard to ignore the follow-up to one of the biggest ordinal sales ever. I’ve tentatively…

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨