Stephen Curry, LeBron James and other NBA celebrities get the Starting Lineup treatment, which includes $50 toys with NFT cards. The Starting Lineup action figures were hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
They featured collectible toys of famous athletes from football, basketball, and baseball. Hasbro has relaunched the brand, more than twenty years after their last mass production. They also come with NFT trading card.
Pre-ordered opened today for the NBA toys
Today, Hasbro opened pre-orders for its first new Starting Lineup toys. The focus of the line is on the NBA with players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry. They are significantly more fun than old-school toys but also more expensive at $50 per piece.
The toy comes with a stand so it can be held in the air. Panini also includes an NFT trading card. is a trading card brand that runs its own blockchain network and has previously issued digital NFT cards based upon the NBA, NFL and Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Each NBA toy comes with an NFT
Every trading card NFT that comes along with a Starting Lineup toys has different rarity levels. A toy buyer may get a regular NFT card but could also end up with a rarer, greener, or blue version of the card with slightly more artwork. Each player gets a limited edition gold NFT card that can only be used once throughout the run.
An NFT is a token on blockchain that represents ownership of an item. It can be used to digital trading cards, other collectibles from sports, profile photos, and video games. In 2021, the NFT market exploded and generated $25 billion in trading volume.
It remains to be seen if those rarer NFTs will end up fetching higher resale values on Panini’s secondary market. However, given the high demand for NBA Top Shot NFTs, this could be an attractive aspect of the new Starting Lineup value proposition.
In partnership with Fanatics (the sports merchandising company), the new Starting Lineup toys were revealed earlier in the year. Fanatics owns a NFT startup in Candy Digital. This company has the Major League Baseball licence. However, these Panini NFT trading card are not being distributed through Candy’s platform.
Hasbro, a 99-year-old toy company, has previously played in the NFT space. This includes bringing brands such as Power Rangers or My Little Pony into this space. Hasbro also partnered the popular NFT project World of Women in order to create a customized-branded Monopoly board game.
