How To Buy Moments on NBA Top Shot

An NBA Top Shot Guide for Rookie Buyers

Welcome to the new age of collecting.

Before it was cards…Now? It’s all about moments, babyyyy.

A moment is like a video clip certified by the blockchain. When you open Top Shot’s marketplace, you will find you have thousands and thousands of moments to choose from. But which ones do you buy? More importantly…how do you buy them?

If you aren’t able to secure a pack, this guide will provide you the basics on how to buy individual moments on NBA Top Shot and how “Dapper” works. Let’s get it.

Adding Funds

You’ve decided to buy a moment on Top Shot, huh? Well, first things first, you have to make sure your account is funded. You could simply use your credit card for each purchase, but I wouldn’t recommend it (more on that later).

In that case, it’s time to add Dapper (or “dapp” as the cool people call it) to your account.

Think of Dapper as the currency of NBA Top Shot. Remember that Top Shot is run by a company called “Dapper Labs” (hence Dapper) and they are a crypto company. Therefore, as any good crypto/blockchain company would do, they have built their own cryptocurrency called “Flow”.

Whether you realize it or not, when you create an NBA Top Shot account, you are creating a Flow wallet on Dapper’s blockchain which holds your funds and your Top Shot moments. When you transfer fiat dollars (USD) into your Dapper account, you are actually converting those dollars into Flow!

Hope I haven’t lost you yet.

Don’t worry too much about it. As you will notice, when you head into the marketplace, everything is still in US dollars (USD). Luckily, Dapper Labs wants to keep it simple for everyone so they take care of the conversions so all users can understand what their moments cost.

You don’t have to think much about Flow, for that reason, but do realize that underneath the surface, you are dealing with that cryptocurrency.

If this is the first cryptocurrency you’ve ever dealt with, congrats! See? And your parents said that cryptocurrency could only be used for illegal things…actually, you can buy digital basketball cards with it too.

Tip: try to always use your Dapper balance instead of continuing to add funds to your NBA Top Shot account. This will save you on the fees to add funds to your account. A service fee will be collected for all credit card payments. It’s about a 5% fee each time you decide to use your credit card.

Back to crypto real quick.

I’ve done this a few times to avoid fees. If you have an existing Flow wallet or use other crypto wallets (including Coinbase), you can transfer funds from there and simply pay those service fees instead. Depending on your wallet, it’ll run around the same percent (3%-5%), and the funds will show up in 15 minutes or so.

It’s just another way to get you thinking of Top Shot in terms of the crypto space and I do recommend trying it.

Buying A Moment

Now your account is loaded up and you’re ready to buy a moment.

Head to the marketplace and start poking around. Type in your favorite player and see if they have a moment. He does? Great.

You will notice most of the big-name players have multiple moments in the marketplace. There are a lot of options to choose from. You even have Common, Rare, and Legendary moments in most cases (see Russell Westbrook example below).

Let’s start slow and price shop by going to the lowest asking price moment for him.

The page is broken down into information on the moment, including how many are for sale, what’s the lowest current ask for that moment, what kind of moment it is and more:

To see all your options, hit ‘Select and Buy’. You can sort the selections by ‘Lowest Ask (Ascending/Descending)’ or Serial Number (Lowest/Highest).

Unless you’re a high roller, you will likely go for Lowest Ask (Ascending). This will sort by price starting with the cheapest ones first but also in order of the better serial numbers at that price. Note that it’s not always organized so nicely that the lowest serial appears first, but it does tend to be, so try to go as low as possible when selecting serial numbers.

When you are ready to commit, click the serial number and it will take you to the moment’s specific landing page, where you click the ‘Buy’ icon. Confirm that it’s the price you’re willing to pay and use your Dapper credit to proceed.

You will be brought to a page where it says the sale is pending. Think of this as Top Shot escrow. The system is confirming the sale on the blockchain and making sure that no other buyers beat you to the sale.

It’s very dramatic as the pinwheel turns and you see if you got it. If all goes well, congrats again! You are now the owner of a moment on Top Shot. An icon on the page will change from ‘pending’ to ‘success’ and let you know it’s now yours and it will be added to your collection in a few minutes time.

You will also received an email that your order has been received.

Off To the Races

And with that, you’re fully prepped to start building your Top Shot collection one moment at a time.

Remember, have fun out there. With good deals, you’ll be fighting with plenty of others in order to get them. Stay calm, and best of luck clicking out there. Hopefully, you can beat the rest to the punch.