Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. (born on August 3, 1977) is an American football quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL). He started playing with New England Patriots and was a member of the team for his first 20 seasons. He was a central contributor to the franchise’s dynasty from 2001 to 2019 in Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady holds nearly every major quarterback record, including passing yards, completions, touchdown passes, and games started, also the most Pro Bowl selections. Never having a losing season, he is the NFL leader in career quarterback wins, quarterback regular season wins, quarterback playoff wins, and Super Bowl MVP awards, as well as the only Super Bowl MVP for two different franchises. Brady has been widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time.
Brady has also been noted for the longevity of his success. In addition to his championships, like many celebrities and athletes, Brady also joined NFT world with Autograph in April 2021. Autograph is an NFT platform that brings together the most iconic brands and legendary names in sports, entertainment and culture to create and launch unique digital assets in NFT world.
What is Autograph NFT Marketplace?
Celebrities has shown lots of interest in NFTs since the crypto collectibles got popular early last year. Accordingly, some celebrities started dropping their own NFTs or running their own platforms to attract fans attention to invest in NFT market. Among these, Tom Brady also cofounded an NFT platform called Autograph which is basically an agency go-between for celebrity athletes and entertainers in the fabulous NFT world. It is mainly used to sell digital sports memoralibilia from Brady and other athletes, like Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Hawk, etc. A number of high-profile celebrities and athletes are involved with the platform, including Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Derek Jeter, Naomi Osaka, Tony Hawk and The Weeknd. Autograph also has partnerships with TV-and-movie behemoth Lionsgate, as well as with online sports-betting firm Draftkings.
Autograph immediately found new funding from crypto investors who hoped the platform could bring a new generation of celebrities and their fans into the world of crypto collectibles. Brady and Richard Rosenblatt, the millionaire entrepreneur, act as co-chairs of the company. Autograph set a deal with DraftKings which made it the exclusive distributor on Autograph’s sports products and created the DraftKings Marketplace. In January 2021, Autograph announced it raised $170M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins. Autograph made a team with several big business names, including Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino, as well as three of the founders of DraftKings.
Tom Brady NFT collections
Brady partnered with DraftKings for a series of NFT collectibles drops. DraftKings Marketplace is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) transaction service of sports betting operator DraftKings. All the drops on Autograph in partnership with DraftKings are available both through the DraftKings Marketplace and the Autograph.io website. The first collection by Tom Brady Preseason Access collection featured Brady himself as the subject of drops happened on August 11, 2021. An additional series of Brady NFTs including signature editions released on 13 August containing the seven-time National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl champion’s authentic digital signature. The initial Brady NFTs were on sale for $12 to $100 per piece, depending on design and rarity level. However, the signed NFTs sold for between $250 and $1,500 apiece.
After his first successful collection, Tom Brady launched his second collection “Live Forever: The Tom Brady Origins Collection” in December 2021 which illustrated his NFL career on Autograph. The collection showed to be a further success to him. This collection showcases some memorabilia of key events of Brady NFL activities before 2000. This collection consisted of 16,600 NFTs each priced at $80 in the public sale. It was a blind purchase as the buyers had no idea what the NFT would be like regarding rarity and other features. As expected, the collection sold out in under 10 minutes and grossed around $1.3 million in total sales on the public sale on December 14, 2021.
An interesting point about Live Forever collection is that it features 25 sets of tiered collectibles based on their rarity. The memorabilia tokenized as part of Tom Brady’s collections are also unique as they include his combine cleats, collage resume, Rookie draft card, combine jersey and stop watch.
There are five possible tiers of rarity are provided in Brady collection, which are Carbon, Platinum, Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby. To be more precise, for example, the college resume collectible is available in Carbon, Platinum, Emerald and Sapphire. Carbon set is known to be the least rare and the Ruby set is the rarest.
The collection is unique as it includes special NFT collectibles named “Immortal Statues.” It is made even more interesting since these Immortal Statues also have the Carbon, Platinum, Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby versions. The difference comes with that these collectibles are specially designed as reward to users that acquire all the five items listed above in the same rarity tier. Then, they become eligible to receive 1 Immortal Statue NFT of the same rarity tier. Another condition to win the reward is to hold the sets at the activation deadline set for Dec. 21, 2021. Also, it is necessary for buyers to link their DraftKings accounts to their Autograph accounts before the date of activation deadline. To make it even more interesting and valuable, Tom Brady signed each NFT in Ruby and Sapphire version of the Immortal Statues collectibles.
How to buy Tom Brady’s NFTs?
As already mentioned, Tom Brady’s collection released on Autograph. Autograph is housed on DraftKings NFT marketplace, so that prospective users have to navigate to DraftKings Marketplace’s website to purchase Tom Brady’s NFTs.
The public sales of Brady collections were on August and December 2021 and it took just few minutes for the whole NFTs to sell out. Now that the drop officially ended, buyers cannot join a queue or wait to get their hands on an NFT. Instead, now they can head to the DraftKings platform secondary market to purchase their favorite NFTs from collectors for higher prices compared to the original price from Autograph.
However, users should be informed that DraftKings Marketplace is only accessible to people living in Canada and the U.S. Therefore, buyers need to register and verify their DraftKings account to buy NFTs on the platform.
When buyers have their accounts set up, they just need to deposit funds through any of the supported deposit methods including:
- Online banking
- Credit and debit cards
- Paypal
- Electronic gift cards
- DraftKings gift cards
As seen on the list of supported payment channels, it is clear that DraftKings does not permit crypto purchases at the time being. Buyers are required to accomplish their orders using fiat currency, more specifically, the U.S. dollar.
Tom Brady Purchases A Bored Ape Yacht Club for over $430K (Updated: 7 April 2022)
Brady has recently developed an interest in the world of NFTs, and he recently made a significant purchase in that market.
According to Boardroom, Brady paid $430,000 for Bored Ape #3667. Bored Ape #3667 has an Army Green Background, Sleeveless Logo Tee, Angry Eyes, Dark Brown Fur, WW2 Pilot Helm Hat, and Bored Unshaven Mouth.
Brady, it appears, confirmed the news the day before yesterday on Twitter. According to Tripsters, Brady purchased Bored Ape #3667, which Benzinga.com describes as “a derivative Bored Ape NFT project.”
“Welcome to the Club; we’re glad you’ve joined us!” “It’s an honour to be a Tripster with the [GOAT of GOATs],” the tweet says.
“I didn’t inhale,” Brady joked on Twitter, referring to the joint the Ape is smoking in the NFT.
Brady is a well-known NFL player who joins a long list of celebrities and athletes who own NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
