With the playoffs already underway, and Playoff Packs on the horizon, NBA Top Shot decided to alter their Series 3 road map by cutting a few planned Sets and changing how they will distribute the rest. The Legendary All-Rookie Set, Common International-themed Set and $9 Blended Packs will not be a part of Series 3, and the second release of Series 3’s Hustle & Show Set will be distributed exclusively via airdrop to Set holders by the end of April.
Additionally, despite hinting at a new type of Challenge back in March, in which collectors would “permanently lock up a number of Moments” to earn a Reward, we’ve yet to see this Challenge deployed. In fact, this new “Crafting Challenge” was supposed to be used for Ja Morant’s Throwdown Reward Moment, but we’re over a month (and multiple pack drops) removed from the Throwdown drop and all we know is that Top Shot is hopeful to have this feature made available by the Conference Finals. Top Shot also intends to release the Rare Teamwork Set exclusively through Challenges, and some of those Challenges are expected to feature this new “locking” mechanism.
Lastly, in the negative updates department, Top Shot announced they still haven’t released all the Metallic Gold Limited Edition and Holo Icon Moments from Series 3, so I need to issue a correction to a column I wrote a few weeks ago with the sub-headline: “The Final MGLE & Holo Icon Drop.” I had assumed that because the season was over and so many Moments were released in those two drops that that would be the conclusion of the Set, but apparently, they still have not released all 150 Moments for the MGLE set nor have they put out all 90 Holo Icon Moments. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, I’m honestly shocked that despite putting out a meticulous road map at the start of Series 3 Top Shot wasn’t able to meet their own goals and the solution to this seems obvious, Top Shot must dramatically reduce the overall supply of their product moving forward. The good bit of news from this is that Top Shot intends to address the oversupply issue by making the final release of these packs available “exclusively through Trade Tickets,” although the timetable on this was incredibly vague. Jacob Eisenberg said during Top Shot’s Twitter spaces that they hope to release these packs before the Top Shot convention, which will happen later this summer, but the date for that venue is still to be determined.
I’m fairly disappointed that the All-Rookie Legendary Set has been postponed, as that was one of the Sets I was most looking forward to when all the Series 3 Sets were originally announced, but I was glad to see the Common Sets canned with Top Shot not wanting to make the supply issue even worse.
I’m curious to see how this “crafting” feature will be deployed, as the initial blog post stated collectors would be required to “permanently” lock up a number of Moments within their collections “meeting a given criteria” to secure the Reward, but we don’t know what that criterion will be. I’d assume Top Shot would let the collectors choose which Moments to permanently lockdown, in which case, the Challenge could be based on locking up a certain amount of Collector Score points, but that’s just a guess. This is essentially a more elaborate Trade Ticketing system – but the goal is the same – remove excess supply from the marketplace. I like the concept of it, although I’m not sure I have many Moments I’d like to permanently shelve.
Playoff Packs
Now for the good news, unlike last season, Top Shot will be releasing far fewer Playoff Moments this time around, limiting each team to just two Moments per round, with a total of five Moments (including the Reward) from each matchup. These Moments will come with a mint count between 8,000 and 8,750, and as we’ve already seen, the Playoff Packs will be redeemable through Challenges. Top Shot also said that they plan to make some of the First Round packs available via Trade Tickets, but they did not hint at how many Trade Tickets these packs might cost.
The first two rounds will be Common Sets released in May, but then Top Shot will bring back the Rare Conference Finals “And Then There Were Four” Set, as well as the Legendary “Finals” Set to close out Series 3 in June. There will also be Common drops alongside the Rare Conference Finals and Legendary Finals drops, and we should get more info on these packs as we get closer to the release date. Lastly, each round will only feature five total Moments per matchup, with four of those Moments coming in packs and the fifth being the Reward, and players will be limited to just two Moments across all the Common Playoff Packs. Therefore, I would assume that for the eliminated teams Top Shot will be releasing Moments from that squad’s best players, while the advancing teams will likely have their lesser stars featured through the first few rounds of these drops.
Another Historic Drop
Later in May, we will get more details on this, but in June, Top Shot will be releasing a historical Rare and Legendary pack in a “first-of-its-kind” event. These packs are expected to be “extremely limited” in supply, and thus will be tough to come by, but that’s what makes things valuable. As we’ve seen throughout Series 3 when everyone wins (i.e. all new users can rip packs), then no one wins, but it does seem that Top Shot is finally learning this lesson. I’m hopeful that Series 4 will look much different than Series 3, with far more scarcity, and we’ll get our first taste of S4 in June as there will not be a Summer Series this year.