NBA Top Shot continues to make waves. Not only is everyone on Twitter talking about it, but they just led a fundraiser to help raise $ 305 million. Michael Jordan was one of the investors and his name has some force in NBA circles.
If Jordan isn’t the NBA GOAT, that designation likely belongs to LeBron James. LeBron is at the center of the newly released Seeing Stars 2 challenge on Top Shot, which gives collectors a chance to acquire a moment that will never come out in packs. If you’re unfamiliar with challenges – or NBA Top Shot in general – be sure to check out some of my introductory articles.
The idea of getting an exclusive LeBron James moment is appealing, but is it worth it? You’ll need to collect 12 separate “Seeing Stars” moments in order to unlock LeBron, and those individual moments can be expensive.
Let’s take a look at some of the data and determine if this challenge is worth your time.
How much will the LeBron moment be worth?
This is obviously the most important question to answer when deciding whether or not you are going to take the challenge, and unfortunately, there is no way to know for sure. Having said that, we can do a bit of guessing to try and come up with a rough number.
LeBron is currently the driving force behind Top Shot. Most of the most expensive Top Shot sales to date have involved LeBron, and he currently has 21 individual moments on Top Shot. The lowest claim out of its 21 moments is $ 129.00, and that’s for a Series 2 Common Support Moment. It’s a CC Moment, meaning there are 35,000 copies. that have already been struck and that there may be more to come. This easily makes it the most common LeBron moment, which is why it’s the cheapest.
Next up for LeBron is another common Series 2 moment, this time from a 3 point. This moment is an LE moment, and there are only 15,000 copies in existence. The low asking price at that time is $ 645.00.
The only other common LeBron time in Series 2 is a dunk, and that time has been capped at 7,500. The low asking price at that time is currently $ 870.00.
Essentially, this tells us that rarity will ultimately determine the value of the collection’s reward.
Each of the 12 moments you need to collect to complete this challenge has been awarded 10,000, so this is the maximum number of challenge rewards that will ultimately be hit. Having said that, it will likely be much lower. This is the second “Seeing Stars” challenge, and Kevin Durant was the first award. There were 4,182 people who completed this challenge, which was also out of a maximum of 10,000.
I guess more people will take on the LeBron challenge than the Durant challenge, but I would still place the number between 5,000 and 6,000. Over 3,400 people have already completed the challenge (courtesy Own the Moment):
Either way, this moment will probably become LeBron’s most valuable common in Series 2. I would place its approximate value at around $ 1000 in the market today.
How much will it cost to complete the challenge?
The answer to this question will vary depending on when you purchase the 12 individual moments. The good news is that this challenge is getting cheaper every day.
The moments you need to collect all come from the “Seeing Stars” set that was released around the All-Star break. There were 24 moments sold in packs in this set: 12 from Team Durant and 12 from Team LeBron. You need to collect all 12 Team LeBron Moments to complete the LeBron Challenge:
Luka Doncic
Steph Curry
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Anthony Davis
Damian Lillard
Nikola Jokic
Jaylen Brown
Paul George
Chris Paul
Domantas Sabonis
Rudy Gobert
Ben Simmons
The prices for these moments are a bit inflated, which happens when they are part of challenges. If you’re looking to spend the bare minimum on those 12 moments right now, it would cost you around $ 2,011.00.
It’s a good chunk of change, but those same 12 moments would have cost you $ 3,085.00 on March 24 and $ 4,055.00 on March 17. In the meantime alone, the price has almost halved.
The deadline to collect the moments needed to complete the challenge is Monday, April 5 at 1 p.m. ET. Expect the price to continue to drop before the deadline. People who own these moments and aren’t up for the challenge will become more and more desperate to sell them. Once the challenge is over, the price of those moments will drop, so low demand will continue to drop before Monday at 1 p.m. ET.
If you’re looking to take on this challenge, waiting until the last possible moment seems like the most + EV strategy.
Is this challenge worth completing?
If you want that LeBron James moment, you have two options: take on the challenge yourself or wait for someone else who has completed the challenge to list it on the market. Assuming you have no interest in keeping any of the individual moments needed to complete the challenge, which route is preferred?
We can take a look at the first “Seeing Stars” challenge to get a preview. The current low asking price for the Kevin Durant Challenge Reward is $ 589.00. If you had bought all the necessary moments right before the challenge ended – which was as low as those moments had been listed on the market – it would have cost you around $ 1,557.00. If you were selling those same moments today, the total asking price is only $ 714.00. This means that you would have spent around $ 843.00 to secure the Durant moment, which obviously turned out to be an overpayment.
It tends to happen with challenges. The required moments don’t hold their value enough to make the search for the reward worth it, so it’s often best to buy the challenge reward after the fact. Of course, you don’t have to sell the moments needed to complete the challenge. Holding the underlying moments and waiting to sell under better market conditions could make completing challenges very profitable in the long run, but I’m only focusing on people who want the reward of the challenge as cheaply as possible.
Having said that, I think the LeBron challenge could be a little different. For starters, the LeBron moment will almost certainly be more precious than the Durant moment. Even though Durant is an all-time great player, he can’t hold a candle to LeBron on Top Shot.
Remember those three common LeBron moments from Series 2 that I listed earlier? Interestingly, Durant also has three Series 2 commons: a 7,500 hit, a 15,000 hit, and a CC (35,000+). The low demands on these times are $ 436.00, $ 128.00, and $ 40.00 respectively, making them much cheaper than LeBrons with the same number of passes.
If the LeBron Challenge reward ends up being worth more than the Durant – which is a safe guess – we have more leeway to sell the individual moments needed to complete the challenge.
Plus, Team LeBron’s moments should hold their value a bit better than Team Durant’s moments. Not all players – guys like Gobert, Sabonis, and George are likely to drop to around $ 35.00 – but Team LeBron’s overall skill level is higher overall. So, Curry, Davis and Antetokounmpo should still be worth something once the challenge is over, while Zion Williamson is the only player on Team Durant whose “Seeing Stars” moment is still over $ 98.00.
If the price for this challenge continues to drop – my target price range would be under $ 1,800 or so – grabbing the 12 moments might end up being the right decision.
Are there other incentives for meeting the challenge?
This is another aspect that makes the challenge attractive. So far we’ve only talked about the low asking price for all of these times. That said, you could get a challenge reward that’s worth a lot more.
Essentially, each person who completes the challenge is randomly assigned a different serial number for the reward. With the Durant challenge, this means that every person who completed the challenge had a one in 4,182 chance of getting the coveted serial number # 1 at this time. The same goes for the jersey serial number, which is another extremely desirable moment. Getting a chance on a No.1 or No.23 LeBron is hugely enticing, and that is an added incentive to take on the challenge.
Additionally, there might be the ability to complete challenges to serve as a prerequisite for certain pack drops. There is nothing definitive about this, but most Top Shot users would like to see a greater barrier of entry on packet drops. One of the biggest “problems” with the site is that a large majority of users just want to get the packs and immediately sell all the times for a profit. There’s nothing wrong with this philosophy – who doesn’t want free money? – but it kept those packs from landing in the hands of people who see the long-term value of Top Shot.
With that in mind, expect something to be done regarding package drops in the future. There’s no guarantee that completing a challenge will give you a special priority, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. In the 4/2 edition of office hours, the Top Shot team discussed making the “Seeing Stars” challenge more relevant in the long term. This could make collectors save the moments long after the LeBron Challenge ends.
It’s more of an art than science, but feel free to check out my math using some of the great tools available in the industry. I leaned over Own the moment, evaluate.market and Add more funds to follow the price evolution of the “Seeing Stars” series. Good luck!