The Road To 350 Trade Tickets
It was around 573 clicks around the NBA Top Shot marketplace when my fingers melted into the keyboard of my MacBook Air, becoming one with my computer. I was in the zone.
Tab, tab, tab, tab, click, click, click, click, checkout, checkout, checkout, checkout, over and over and over and over. The process became meditative, almost therapeutic, in its repetitious monotony and predictability.
Sometimes they were $3, sometimes $4, but it didn’t matter.
I couldn’t even tell you their names.
I went to the marketplace, filtered by S3, sorted by low ask, opened as many tabs as I could, and went through them one by one, a delicate dance of buying one then the next, revisiting the previous when it was time to checkout, optimizing every second, jumping through the code of the marketplace speed and grace, buying, buying, buying.
My inbox is flooded with the same message, over and over again, like Jack Torrence at a typewriter in a remote snow-covered hotel. “We’ve received your NBA Top Shot order.”
It started last night. I was 7 hours into the new Beatles documentary on Disney+ when I came to the realization that I could not miss the first-ever Series 1 Locker Room pack. It’s history. I can’t skip that by choice, as tedious and time-consuming as it might be to earn the right to participate.
So I opened my laptop and got to work, slowly at first, then recognizing the patterns and cadences of the marketplace in a way I’d never in the past. Necessity drove innovation, and innovation drove an absurd amount of transactions. Small, insignificant, completely joyless transactions. I’d trade them in when it felt right. The biggest bucket was 47 tickets. The average was 20. The final was 13 trade tickets.
350 on the nose.
I’m ready for Tuesday. Whatever the pack might hold, assuming I’m lucky enough to get one, is the gamble I’m willing to take.
To experience history, and maybe even get lucky.
Steph Debut lucky.
LeBron Kobe Tribute lucky.
The odds are against me, but I don’t care.
Never tell me the odds.
