"... I used to collect cars and horse statues... today its all about damn cats and frogs... I need something for a real Gentleman!"

Everyone’s looking for the next pump, but one of the funniest moments of 2017 was the breakout of Cryptokitties. The idea of collecting individual pieces of trading card like items is not new to the crypto space though, Rarepepe have been introduced in late 2016 with the hopes of capturing the imagination of the crypto enthusiasts as well as pepe’s fans from 4chan and the rest of the internet, Rarepepes were built on counterpart - A bitcoin second layer solution that itself came about in early 2014, and still hold some appeal, the game spells of genesis also uses counterparts as the infrastructure. The wider art market is still mostly unaware or does not appreciate crypto collectibles as art but the are signs this is beginning to change, last month, it was reported that Ai Weiwei released a token called Priceless (PRCLS) using Ethereum, a first by an artist of this caliber.

It’s not all fun and games though, a lot of “collectibles” came out since the Cryptokitties boom, the barrier to entry seems to be exceptionally low, just make some neat cartoon graphics, create a erc721 token, and use the rest of the money to start an ad campaign on social media and major news outlets such as Cointelegraph.

Nevertheless, the trend created some more services around it too, Opensea.io and rarebits are some of the platforms that exists today to trade Crypto art and collectibles and offer a more realistic proposition in terms of value for a potential investor than the collectibles themselves, most of which are destined for minor success at best. The main value of a token released by these auction houses might be the revenue sharing aspect that is made possible by the smart contracts, but this option is limited to erc721 tokens for now.