Donald Trump’s trading card loses value
The value of Donald Trump’s new digital trading cards fell on Monday after a weekend surge, although they still show a hefty profit compared to their original price.
The former president was widely mocked on social media last week after his hyped “big announcement” turned out to be a collection of digital trading cards depicting himself as various characters such as a superhero, cowboy and an astronaut.
“My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday. “These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life and Career! Collect all your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting.”
Trump said the cards, which cost $99 each, “would make a great Christmas present.” Despite the ridicule, all 45,000 tokens in the Trump collection sold out within 12 hours.
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The cards are essentially non-fungible tokens (NFTs) collected digitally on computers or phones.
The value of the digital trading cards rose over the weekend on sites such as the non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea, but has fallen back over the past 24 hours.
As of Dec. 18, the average price at which the trading cards were purchased was 0.5398 of the cryptocurrency ether, equivalent to about $638 each, according to OpenSea data. This was based on 2,855 sales.
In comparison, as of December 19, the average price fetched by the trading cards had fallen back to 0.3671 Ether, or $434. This was after 1,305 sales. However, they are still well above the original selling price.
Trading volume for the digital trading cards reached 2,752 Ether ($3.3 million) on OpenSea on December 17, falling to 1,541 Ether ($1.8 million) on December 18 and 479 Ether ($570,000) so far on December 19.
According to Open Sea, there have already been 23,095 sales of Trump’s trading cards. Of those who have bought, 65 percent of people buy only one item, 24 percent buy 2-3 times, 9 percent of people buy 4-10 items, the remaining percent buy 11 items or more.
The rapid sell-out of the digital trading cards led Trump to take to social media on Friday to brag about the achievement. “WE MADE HISTORY!” he wrote on a Truth Social post. “My Trump Digital Trading Cards sold out in hours. Congratulations to the collectors. Thank you.”
Trump has faced criticism after his NFT announcement from both liberals and conservatives.
Democratic California representative Ted Lieu tweeted: “Dear MAGA people. Hope it’s clear to you now that Donald Trump doesn’t respect you and thinks you’re suckers.”
During his show, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said that this move by Trump may have ruined his presidential chances.
“When the former president of the United States, and a recently declared [candidate] for his third consecutive election, says he has a big announcement, people are going to take it pretty seriously,” he said.
“Instead, the big announcement almost completely craters his presidential campaign before it even gets off the ground.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump for comment.
