A signed MJ jersey and a home run ball signed by the Bambino and Lou Gehrig kicked off RareMint’s $350 million project uniting NFTs with 1-of-1 memorabilia.
RareMint, a specialized marketplace planning to sell $350 million in NFTs backed by 1-of-1 assets, announced Thursday that it enjoyed a successful beta launch with the major sales of “historical asset-backed NFTs,” headlined by a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as well as a signed Michael Jordan jersey.
The 1930 Lou Gehrig home run ball signed by Gehrig and Ruth was purchased by BKCoin Capital for a little over $60,000, while the jersey Jordan wore in a game during the 1989-90 season went for 23 ETH — currently just under $78,000 — to a private collector at Art Basel.
Additional NFTs backed by rare memorabilia, such as the FIFA World Cup, will be dropped every Tuesday and Thursday moving forward. Investors backing the company include BKCoin Capital, Arca, Gatecap Ventures, Sana Sano Capital, Crescent City Capital, and Commerce Ventures.
“The future of sports collectibles is digital, and this is just the beginning,” said Brett Calapp, RareMint’s co-founder and CEO. “We’re only scratching the surface of our asset-backed NFTs, and I’m very excited about the potential of unlocking increased liquidity and additional financial value for these valuable rare assets through DeFi mechanics such as collateralized lending.”
For those wary of the world of NFTs and cryptocurrency, having them backed by premium collectibles is a novel and unique way to mitigate that risk while earning money from both the physical items and the NFTs.
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“With rare sports collectible NFTs, there is a fixed supply since Lou Gehrig is not hitting any more home run balls and Michael Jordan is not dropping any more game-winning shots,” said Carlos Betancourt, BKCoin Capital’s founding principal. “Asset-backed NFTs make for a solid alternative investment in an otherwise volatile market that has no cap in supply.”
All RareMint collectibles are stored at the company’s private vault and are checked, audited and authenticated every 90 days by service providers like PSA, JSA or Beckett. Images of Certificate of Authenticity are available for preview and fully accessible on the platform for the asset owner, RareMint said.
To go along with the single Ultra Rare collectible of each asset, RareMint is creating 25 Limited Editions to be included in each drop. This represents the first step toward completing a RareMint Registry Set, which comes with a rewards system — listed out below as it appears on the release:
- MINTS tokens
- Top Leaderboard Ranking
- Early access to future NFT drops
- Exclusive NFT airdrops for near complete sets
- Acess to compete in cross set challenges
- Invitations to exclusive RareMint Registry events
“Our product offering will consist of many variations of ways fans can connect with their favorite historical athletes and assets by distributing ERC-721 tokens on Ethereum and layer 2 networks such as Polygon and Arbitrum,” said Niko Hosn, RareMint’s co-founder and CTO. “We are working with partners to facilitate a custodial solution where the everyday fan can have a lower barrier to entry without having to set up and manage their keys in a wallet if they choose not to.”
Until then, owning NFTs backed by rare memorabilia while mitigating risk could be an appealing alternative for collectors moving forward.
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