Full Disclosure I owe the credit for this article solely to my lovely wife Teri. While I was working on the last article she went to Google on her phone, and looked up an acronym neither of us was familiar with. And in doing so, turned the golden key in the lock. Thanks honey!
In my previous article, I had some serious fun slamming Kanye’s Little Beyotch for the ridiculous rollout today of a line of Trump branded digital trading cards. They show him in a series of terribly photoshopped poses as an astronaut, cowboy, and Superhero. I gotta be honest, even freakin’ Ron Popeil had better produced ads for his vaunted $19.99 shit, But wait! There’s more!
Just to set the table here. What Trump is hawking is digital trading cards. And any of us who have ever been a kid, and loved sports is familiar with, it’s trading cards. In my day, we actually traded them with friends in order to get ones we wanted but didn’t have. But on a deeper level, the dream wish was to get a packet with the Aaron Judge rookie card, which 20 years later you could sell for enough money to get a retirement condo in Paramus, New Jersey. But on every level, the ley was the ability to trade or sell the goddan cards.
And therein lies the golden nugget at the core of the Trump con, and even for a cheap, greedy, opportunistic prick like him, it’s bottom feeding at its worst. In my article I noted that Traitor Tot was running the sale on an already financially troubled Cryptocurrency site. And that’s true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Here’s the rest of the story. If you go to that POS website to fill stockings with useless digital trading cards showing Trump being dumber than the Roslyn Village Idiot, you will find that you are engaging in a NFT. Look, I’m no techno-weenie, I hate my own cell phone, so I had no idea what the hell NFT meant, and neither did Teri. And then she looked it up on Google on her cell phone.
NFT stands for a Non Fungible Transaction. And the minute I heard her say it, my ears perked up, because I know damn well what that means. It means that it is a final transaction. In other words, I sell something to you, and you own it forever. You can’t sell it, you can’t trade it, and you can’t give it away. It’s yours and yours alone forever.And since it’s a crypto site, the transaction is basically untraceable.
This is the most bush dick move I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been around more than half a century, and I’ve known friends who, having a father die, immediately head to the attic to scour through the baseball or football, or basketball trading cards to see if there were any hidden treasures in there. I never saw one who hit paydirt, but the ritual had to be observed, and the dream chased.
Which is what makes this whole scam so insidious. Trump is in it merely for the $99 per card, minus the web site’s cut. But let’s say that the Trump Go-Bot trading card goes viral. Trump and the site can always just jack up the price to purchase the card, but you can’t even give the fucker away, much less make a profit on it. You trusted a con man, and spent $99 on a digital card that’s now worth $15,000, and all you can do is to it there and look at it with tears in your eyes.
And there you have the essence of Trump. In his entire life, he has never had a problem with graft or corruption just as long as he got his share. But if you stiff him, you’re on the shit end of the stick. And in this digital trading card boondoggle, he’s found his ultimate revenge against his own supporters. If Trump can’t make a buck, then nobody can make a buck. What an asshole.
Just saw his commercial for them on Morning Joe. He’s saying the cards represent his life and career. What a freaking joke! They don’t have a card of him being a grifter, which is his whole life’s work.
NFTs, like crypto currency are for suckers. Just ask Melanoma.
You can resell NFTs on the secondary market. I think you are mixing up “selling copies” of an NFT and selling an NFT you own. NFTs can’t be copied, but ownership can be passed from one person to another. Here is a good intro. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/how-to-buy-sell-nfts/amp
As I indicated in an article earlier this week when it comes to web stuff it seems like “hot”, or “it” stuff that pops up is just another fad. When I first learned about it, it seemed like a dumbass fad and nothing since then has moved me away from my initial take. If as some would no doubt say I’m not “cool enough to get it” I can live with that cause I have no fucks to give when it comes to internet trends. I can download all kinds of stuff including pictures, memes, cartoons etc. that I like to my computer FOR FREE and as long as I don’t try to use copyrighted work to make money for myself off of someone’s copyrighted work it’s okay. So why the hell would I pay ten bucks, much less a hundred for some image Trump or some other self-absorbed asshole wants to sell of themself? I’m old enough to have traded real baseball cards as a kid in the 1960s. Which brings up an unpleasant memory.
I say unpleasant because if not for my oldest sister I’d have long ago retired and done so quite rich. I had a neighbor who was retired. He’d started the main men’s store in my hometown and was one of those dudes who was extremely fussy about his lawn. Didn’t want us kids playing on it. Still, he liked me and even wound up trusting me to mow it for him when he and his wife travelled. He had seen and heard me and my friends haggling over baseball card for a couple of years and knew how much we were into them. One summer his son brought his own family home (from Dallas) to visit and his grandson and I hung out some. Kinda weird guy. And he didn’t like baseball either. The only sport he cared anything at all about was pro football and the Dallas Cowboys and even that wasn’t all that big a deal to him. Not a bad guy, but we didn’t really hit it off either
But the point is that like his dad, he had ZERO interest in an actual treasure in my neighbor’s basement. There was a room with most of a wall stacked with shoeboxes. After that visit, during which I later deduced Mr. Weber had shown his grandson those boxes and what was in them like his father young Wesley didn’t want the stuff. You guessed it – every box was filled with baseball trading cards, of different brands btw going all the way back to the 1920s! Mr. Weber was old but still had some years left. Still, since no one in his family wanted that collection, and for some reason he’d taken such a liking to me he shyly took me down to his basement and showed me that huge number of shoeboxes and what they contained. I guess he wanted someone who would appreciate the collection to have it. Needless to say, seeing stuff like the New York Yankees’ 1927 “Murderer’s Row”, the whole fucking team with multiple copies of each player (I played first base and that’s why he pulled that box – Lou Gehrig) but that was far from all that was there. For my friends (since I grew up in hard core Cardinal fan country) the old St. Louis “Gas House Gang” was there too.
He offered it all to me and not being a dumbass I gratefully accepted it, and told him he’d never have to pay me to tend to his yard when he was out of town ever again. We shook hands and he even helped me transfer all those shoeboxes from his basement to ours. I told him I didn’t plan to share just how much there was, but that I wouldn’t be able to let my friend’s know I’d acquired a Dizzy Dean card from his heyday with the Cardinals, as well as on from the end of his career which was with their rival, my beloved (even then) Cubs! He understood. Again, this was in the 1960s so the worth of that collection which had multple cards of so many players including icons was more intrinsic than monetary. That stuff wouldn’t become a valuable commodity until the 1980s.
Enter my p.o.s. oldest sister. During the fall of my freshman year in college I had a class that started at 7am three days a week. Sometimes, even after all my classes were done I wouldn’t get back over to my own town until late in the day or early evening. I happened to come home one day to see a yard sale going on in our front yard, with a few items of MINE sitting on a table including my first baseman’s mitt! I naturally asked WTF stuff of mine was doing on sale, and she oh so proudly gave me some money. Without my permission (and with no hint leading up to that day she intended to hold a yard sale) she’d gone through my room and other parts of the house including our basement (quite large) and decided that some of my things should go on sale, “because it’s just been sitting there.” She didn’t just sell off all my fishing tackle, rods & reels and other gear I’d purchased with paper route, yardwork and other money I’d earned starting in early grade school, she sold my baseball card collection! She said she’d only put out a few boxes, and some guy asked if there might be any more. So she took him inside and showed him. And her stupid ass was sooooooo proud that she’d gotten a whole twenty bucks from him for the whole thing! I sometimes think of the literal millions (and there were a lot of very special and rare cards) she pissed away. And when baseball cards exploded as a major business in the 1980s, and some cards were being auctioned for tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars I sometimes pointedly reminded her of what she STOLE from me. I consider myself lucky she didn’t sell my shotguns but she knew I hunted which is why they didn’t go for a song that awful day too.
Anyway, there is a huge difference between a tangible item that is limited or even unique that a person can hold in their hands, and an image on a computer screen.
THAT has to be the “best” hard luck story I have ever read. My heart bleeds for you 😨
And you didn’t shoot her dumb ass? WTF dude?!? I’m sorry man, when you do something that fucking stupid like your sister did, you lose your license to live. Period. End of story.
Oh things got plenty ugly between us and not just over the baseball cards. All that fishing gear (rods & reels, a couple of tackle boxes full of stuff) was worth way more than the ten bucks she sold it for (her “you haven’t used it in years” didn’t cut it. I hadn’t gone fishing much in the latter part of h.s. but I still did. She just didn’t happen to be around when I went out to do so) not to mention some other items. But you have to understand, this was in the mid 1970s Baseball trading cards wouldn’t become a commodity, with various cards suddenly being worth significant money until well into the 1980s So while there was to anyone with a brain an understanding that a collection of cards that took fifty years to gather had some monetary value that value was nowhere near what it would become. At the time maybe four or five hundred dollars I’d have guessed. Ok, if some of those still alive (like my hero Ernie Banks) to sign their cards an invididual one might have been worth that much if I could meet them and get them to sign. Again, back in those days autographs weren’t the commodity they’d become either. The REAL value was intrinsic. How does one put a price on something like that? It would be like someone’s stamp collection that went back that far. Unless there was a really rare one or two in there it’s the kind of thing an heir might have gotten a few hundred or so at some stamp collector’s convention. Or butterfly collection. Whatever.
It is a distressing, even infuriating thing to think about which is why I have tried to avoid thinking about it ever since that awful day. Our relationship became increasingly strained over the years and eventually I broke off contact with her entirely. That’s an even longer and uglier story. I will say EVERYONE who knew the both of us understood, and wouldn’t help her locate me. I have her reason to believe I’d left the DC area after leaving active duty. In the early years of the internet even it was difficult to try and locate someone. When she died I can honestly say I felt nothing. No sense of loss. No grief. Even positive times in my life involving her had been cancelled out, and when I took a cold hard look at her life and things between us I realized she was never the supporter she made herself out to be. In a way she was now that I think about it a lot like Trump – self-centered and unable to tolerate anyone else being in the spotlight. I realized how she’d tried to shit on the few good moments I had growing up and when reaching adulthood. If I’m wrong and there’s an afterlife she’s probably taking a measure of joy in my struggles since being forced into early retirement, and now that I’m officially a senior citizen scrambling from month to month.
NFT’s are silly. coin base is always trying to get us to mint free ones to make us want to buy a stupid picture. but with those there are millions made. I rather buy the coins that back the companies that mint the NFT’s. like asset Mantle or stars. then stake the coins for 343% income per 6 seconds.of you set the stake to restake the income, coins produce 2300% income. that is how much money these groups make from people buying these NFT’s.Dont stake thru binance or coin base and only get 14% interest. stake thru the company that binance and coin base and ledger stake thru https://www.allnodes (dot) com/invite/zjmp7m. it produces more income than actually mining the coins.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, not transaction. And you can resell an NFT.
Thanks being said, Trump is indeed an asshole.
I read there are strings attached to these particular NFT’s with regard to resale. And yes, it still points to him being an asshole.
An NFT can be resold. The cost of reselling is tied to a cryptocurrency and depending on the structure of the original sale could include paying a percentage of the new sale price to the original seller. This will continue the grift. The bulk of nft trading has resulted in a profit to the first buyers if they sell quickly. Many nft’s have dropped greatly in “value” after the initial speculation slows.
The issue isn’t the “tradeability”. It’s that other issue you touched on. The lack of transparency in crypto. Who do you think buys these things? Trump’s base? No. People who want an untraceable way to give him money.
I’m curious what y’all have to say about the following theory:
It’s interesting that the cards sold out overnight, isn’t it?