The value of Donald Trump’s new digital trading cards dipped on Monday after a weekend surge, although they are still showing a hefty profit compared with their original price.
The former president was widely mocked on social media last week after his hyped “major announcement” turned out to be a collection of digital trading cards depicting himself as various characters such as a superhero, cowboy, and an astronaut.
“My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday. “These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life and Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting.”
Trump said the cards, which cost $99 each, “would make a great Christmas gift.” Despite the ridiculousness, all 45,000 tokens in the Trump collection sold out within 12 hours.
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The cards are essentially non-fungible tokens (NFTs) collected digitally on computers or phones.
The value of the digital trading cards soared over the weekend on sites such as the non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea, but has fallen back in the last 24 hours.
On December 18, the average price that the trading cards was bought for was 0.5398 of the cryptocurrency ether, the equivalent of about $638 each, according to OpenSea data. This was based on 2,855 sales.
By comparison, so far on December 19, the average price fetched by the trading cards had fallen back to 0.3671 ether, or $434. This was after 1,305 sales. They are still well up on the original sales price however.
Trading volume of the digital trading cards reached 2,752 ether ($3.3 million) on OpenSea on December 17, falling to 1,541 ether ($1.8 million) on December 18 and 479 ether ($570,000) so far on December 19.
According to Open Sea, there have already been 23,095 sales of Trump’s trading cards. Of those that have purchased, 65 percent of people buy only one item, 24 percent buy 2-3 times, 9 percent of people buy 4-10 items, the remaining percentage buy 11 items or more.
The quick sell-out of the digital trading cards led Trump to take to social media on Friday to brag about the accomplishment. “WE MADE HISTORY!” he wrote on a Truth Social post. “My Trump Digital Trading Cards sold out in hours. Congratulations to the collectors. Thank you.”
Trump has faced criticism following his NFT announcement from both liberals and conservatives.
Democratic California Representative Ted Lieu tweeted: “Dear MAGA folks. Hope it’s clear to you by now that Donald Trump disrespects you and thinks you are suckers.”
During his show, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said this move from Trump may have ruined his presidential chances.
“When the former president of the United States, and a newly declared [candidate] for his third consecutive election, says that he has a major announcement, people are going to take that pretty seriously,” he said.
“Instead, the major announcement almost completely craters his presidential campaign before it even gets off the ground.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump for comment.