GM

It's Friday – time to get weird and buy that scuffed NFT you've been dreaming about.

In today’s edition:

• Pokemon card NFTs have arrived 👀

• Your specially curated NFT lists

• Three new drops

Links for the Mint/Watch list drops are HERE.

Did you know?

We have a premium pass that gives you access to a directory of every drop we cover, complete with detailed information on how to get on every whitelist (including those underrated ones that aren’t already full).

And for those curatooors out there, you can get free NFTs just by finding drops that end up on the Mint or Watch list.

Lastly, hang with me and the MoS team in a private discord with weekly voice chats. The vibes are great.

Would you like to be featured in Mint or Skip like the above ☝️ ?

Pokemon card NFTs have arrived 👀

Context

Courtyard.io is a new marketplace on Polygon that lets people turn physical collectibles like Pokemon Cards into NFTs.

To celebrate their launch, they announced that they’ll be releasing a drop of their own.

No info on what the mint is yet, but anyone who signs up here will get the details first.

Our take

My Pokemon card collecting journey was simple.

As a young lad, I’d buy packs at my local Korean bodega. And if I found something I liked, I’d sell it at a comic book shop for an obscenely lowballed offer.

It was like an assembly line where I turned dollars into pennies with alarming efficiency.

But more often than not I’d just lose my cards to the sands of time – scattered and forgotten across high school lockers, book bags and bus seats across the nation.

Obviously, things have come a long way since then. Card collecting has turned into a big business with sophisticated traders, pack opening streams with millions of viewers, as well as old-school fraud of the highest degree.

And now Courtyard wants to kick things up yet another notch – this time using NFTs.

Here’s how it works:

1. People mail in their graded collectible cards

2. The cards are vaulted, scanned, and tokenized

3. They can then be traded as ERC-721 NFTs

4. And later redeemed for the physical

Plus, anyone who vaults their cards will earn 1% of the sale price on every trade on that card forever. This could be a great hook for any large warehouses that have huge collections lying around.

Another benefit is that, once cards are tokenized, they become composable assets that can hook into other protocols.

For example, here’s a story of expensive asset-backed NFTs being used to guarantee loans:

A year ago this stuff was mostly theoretical, now it’s actually happening.

What’s next?

Well, first they need to ramp up their card library. It’s clearly still very early and there isn’t a ton of activity happening yet.

Next, they said they’re working to add actual card pack openings to the platform. So it’s likely that this upcoming drop they’re promoting will be some sort of randomized pack of vaulted NFTs.

Beyond cards, they’ve hinted at adding Comic Books as their next category.

Now, Courtyard isn’t the first to come up with this idea, nor will they be the last. And two-sided marketplaces are always notoriously difficult to ramp up.

But we’re bullish on Real World Assets (maybe worth a post soon) and think these applications are a sign of things to come. Worth exploring.

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

Indelible Open Editions

This Sunday, while you’re hopefully touching grass and definitely not glued to a chart, the no-code tool Indelible Labs will launch open editions on Base as part of Onchain Summer.

Founded by developers Michael Hirsch and Roberto Pando, the platform has confirmed two collaborators for the release of two separate editions:

1. Learning to Double Dutch by Amber Vittoria

2. The Guardian from Solana-based PFP Degenerate Ape Academy 

Keep your eyes peeled for a confirmation on price. Me? I’ll be minting some frozen margaritas for my own little offchain summer.

Highlight x Fingerprints DAO

Another art exhibit for Onchain Summer is happening next Tuesday.

Respected curation DAO Fingerprints has teamed up with recently launched generative art platform Highlight for a release featuring four artists who most generative collectooors (particularly of the Art Blocks variety) should be familiar with:

Melissa Wiederrecht / James Merrill / Holger Lippmann / Leander Herzog

Like most other base mints we don’t have price for this one, but I expect it to be accessible for most bankrolls.

Untitled Verse Drop by Kelly Milligan

Wrapping up today’s art drop trio, we’ve got Verse dropping their signature Twitter sneak peek + artist tag combo featuring art from Kelly Milligan, perhaps best known for his previous Art Blocks Curated release, Act of Emotion.

It looks like this release features interactive art, something we haven’t seen much from Verse yet, so I’m curiously awaiting more details.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. Genesis SFT Pass. Digital anime collectibles from a notable team

3. LUCI: Chapter 5. Follow-up from artist with esteemed collector base

4. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

5. Shadow Hats. Ordinals drop from the creators of Forgotten Runes

6. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

7. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

8. Quasi Dragons. Innovative drop from an Art Blocks veteran

9. Sugartown Oras. Zynga, Farmville creators, releasing free NFTs

10. Memeland [TBC]. High-value treasure MVPs minting on BTC