Collectors buy $450k in Coca-Cola NFTs despite poor historical performance

Traders on Coinbase’s new Base chain have piled over $450,000 into an NFT offering from brand giant Coca-Cola — a strong showing despite the fact that major brand NFT launches have consistently demonstrated a lackluster history on secondary markets.

Coinbase announced the launch of the collection on Sunday, part of the chain’s “Onchain Summer” initiative, and minting began roughly at noon in New York. The inspiration for the collection is an aesthetically confused mashup of both classic and contemporary art with Coke bottles. 

In the initial days of minting, the new collection quickly gained popularity among collectors. At time of writing, nearly 60,000 Masterpieces have been minted, bringing in over $450,000. Minting is scheduled to end Wednesday at 12 pm ET. 

Among the 3,000 individual NFT collections on Base, Masterpiece contract addresses account for 8 of the top 50 most active collections in terms of transfers on a 24-hour basis, despite being just a few hours old. 

The Masterpieces mint contract has been sending proceeds of the sale to a secondary address, which has collected just over 192 ether (ETH) worth $360,000 for the three classic painter themed collections of Vermeer, Munch and Van Gogh. Secondary addresses for the contemporary artists have gone to separate addresses, raking in a total of $88,000. 

The Base chain is quickly emerging as a destination for NFT traders. According to two Dune Analytics dashboards, over the past week, transfers for two popular NFT standards — ERC-721 and ERC-1155 — have been growing steadily, with Base now accounting for over 10% of total multichain volume for both standards. 

Future prospects

Despite the hot start in what is otherwise a sluggish bear market for NFTs, Masterpieces buyers may have a rough road ahead of them in terms of turning profit on their digital Coke bottles. 

Historically, buying NFT collections from major brands has been a fraught proposition for traders. Fellow drink giant Budweiser launched the Budverse Cans: Heritage Edition collection in November 2021, selling digital images of stylized historical beer cans for $499, or $999 “gold” cans. Since the mint, the floor price has fallen to .1 ETH on scant volume, representing a drawdown of 63%. 

This type of performance is not unusual for NFT launches from major brands. 

TIME Magazine’s NFT drop was one of the most chaotic in Ethereum’s history, with MEV bots crowding the mint such that the collection sold out almost immediately. While the NFTs originally sold for .1 ETH, climbed as high as 3 ETH after mint, but now has settled at .03 ETH — a dollar-term drawdown of 83%. 

Generally speaking, brand collections enjoy a brief pump before collapsing and permanently remaining under mint price. However, multiple pieces from the Masterpieces collection have already fallen below their mint on OpenSea, even though minting is still open for another day.

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