LeBron just broke the NBA scoring record – now his NFTs are flying

LeBron James broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record on Tuesday, scoring his 38,888th. points, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 39 in the process. Since then, the LeBron hype has seemingly increased NFT further sales NBA top shot—including packages that could win buyers an NFT of the record-breaking shot.

Dapper Labs tells Decrypt that sales of LeBron James NFTs have increased since Sunday, February 5, as the anticipated moment approached. The platform recorded nearly $234,000 in LeBron NFT sales via its secondary marketplace from Sunday through this morning.

This sales figure represents nearly 2,500 individual NFT sales for James, and marks the largest total for the Los Angeles Lakers star on NBA Top Shot since May 2022. One of those moments sold for $13,500, making it the largest Top Shot- sales this week, per data from DappRadar.

However, LeBron’s impact has not been solely on secondary market sales. On Wednesday, Dapper Labs held another drop of 100,000 packs of NFT collectibles for $9 each. Every buyer will get a free add-on pack of a single NFT starting February 23rd – and some of those buyers will receive an NFT from that record-breaking moment.

Only 99 editions of LeBron’s shot will be featured on NBA Top Shot. Already, 25 of them are reserved for the top collectors on the platform based on their user points – which are accumulated by trading NFTs and completing gamified challenges.

Up to 25 more will be awarded to the top LeBron collectors on the leaderboard by February 16th. The rest will be distributed among those who bought this week’s $9 NFT pack.

Launched in 2020, NBA Top Shot was one of the key drivers of the NFT market boom in 2021, although sales and NFT prices have fallen sharply since then. Overall, the platform – which lives on Dapper – was created Flow blockchain-has generated about $1.05 billion in marketplaces to date, according to CryptoSlam.

Market sales have picked up in the past week, likely fueled in part by the LeBron buck, racking up just over $1 million in trades over the past seven days. That’s a 35% increase over the previous seven-day period, per CryptoSlam.

Increased momentum around LeBron James may also extend to other NFT platforms. Rare NBAan officially licensed Ethereum NFT fantasy basketball game, currently auctioning off a single edition James trading card. The current top bid is 5 ETHor about $7,600, with almost four days left in the auction.

Last weekend, Sorare NBA set its own all-time record for an NFT sale when a one-of-a-kind Giannis Antetokounmpo NFT was auctioned for 113.9 ETH, or over $187,000 at the time. That tripled Sorare NBA’s highest sale price to date, measured in ETH.

In contrast, NBA Top Shot’s biggest sale of all time is a LeBron James NFT moment that was sold via an off-chain auction for nearly $388,000 in April 2021 in the middle of Top Shot’s peak.