As announced yesterday, Panini America will be the first to launch collectable trading cards for various sports using blockchain technology for the purchase and sale of the cards themselves.
The auction will start on January 6th and 10 cards will be issued each week. However, only dollars can be used as a payment method. Panini’s official press release doesn’t yet explain how the payments and the blockchain will work and it’s not clear why the payments cannot be in crypto.
In total, there will be 100 cards, and they will be pegged 1 to 1 with their physical counterparts. The images depict athletes from different sports such as NFL, NFLPA, NBA, NBPA, college athletes and NASCAR. To name a few, there will be Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Neymar and Diego Maradona.
In a month, in January 2020, Panini will also launch a dedicated blockchain for other cards, creating a major secondary market, especially since the advantage lies in the fact that these cards will not deteriorate over time and will be authenticated by the blockchain, thus eliminating the risk of counterfeiting.
It was difficult to choose the cards to bring on the blockchain from among many valid figures and the development of the blockchain took years of experimentation, as explained by the CEO of Panini America, Mark Warsop:
“We were very thorough and a number of factors were considered in selecting the players that will be released in our Panini trading cards that utilize blockchain technology. There is not a more iconic trading card than the rare 1909-11 Honus Wagner T206 baseball card. To be able to produce the first ever Honus Wagner blockchain card, along with all of these other players utilizing blockchain technology and ensuring that these cards will now live forever in the digital realm, is truly an honor”.
“We have spent years researching and exploring the best possible way to incorporate blockchain into our trading cards as another level of authentication – as well as the best way to introduce blockchain to sports fans and collectors. We believe our platform and the fact that the cards will be sold in U.S. dollars rather than a digital currency will help fans and collectors have a better understanding, knowing that their cards utilize blockchain as another level of authenticity.”
Blockchain technology can, therefore, be used to secure data and in this case, be connected to physical and non-replicable objects. So in a way we are dealing with real NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), similar to those in Formula 1, where the possibility of staking them has recently been announced.
