So you want to invest in NBA Top Shot, but don’t want to waste your money?

If you’re somewhat familiar with NBA Top Shot then you know that your best chance of acquiring a rare or valuable Moment is to purchase a pack. Simply, packs are your best bet for a good ROI.

Packs contain anywhere from 3-10 random Moments and are assigned a specific tier that determines the price of the pack. The higher the tier of the pack, whether common, rare or legendary, the more expensive the cost of entry.

But affordability isn’t your only consideration when buying packs. Since all packs are released with a limited run of packs, all packs are limited editions and makes them difficult to obtain. These pack releases are referred to drops and these drops typically occur twice a month during the NBA season.

What is a drop anyways?

The kicker is in order to even get a chance at a legendary highlight, you have to be patient and wait for one of their periodic drops. These drops aren’t any different than when a popular shoe company releases a limited edition collaboration with designer in that there’s going to be a lot of people lining up for it.

Same goes with NBA Top Shot Drops, you’re vying for a spot in that line for the chance to buy a pack. So once you know when the drop is happening, you have to join at that particular time (or 10-20 minutes before) the drop time.

All that said, getting in on a pack drop is much much much easier said than actually done. Pack drops have recently been swarmed with hundreds of thousands of collectors waiting in line and NBA Top Shot has admitted that they we’re prepared for the significant increase in demand and the platform has been “overwhelmed” to the point that they’ve throttled registrations.

NBA Top Shot drop schedule for 2021

Here’s a schedule of all the upcoming NBA Top Shot drops (as well drops from past) for the 2020-21 NBA season starting since the NBA tipped off their schedule in late December 2020. We’ll continually update this schedule as we learn of more drops. Most recent drops are at the top.

Any drops that have been crossed out mean they were either delayed, postponed indefinitely, or cancelled. As mentioned, this drop schedule lists off mostly past pack releases, but we’ll add upcoming drops to the above schedule as soon as we hear about new drops. Typically, drops are announced a day or so before the actual date/time. All the packs that have been released have sold out with the most-recent drops selling out as soon as they’re dropped.

Why packs over Moments?

Yes, you’re not promised a rare Moment when you buy these packs, but because packs typically cost a fraction of even moderately-popular Moments found on their Marketplace, they’re a good risk to take.

Packs can be priced as little as $10 a pack for three Moments up to $999 for a pack and ten Moments.

For example, if you’re to buy a pack for $15, it might take you buying up twenty packs before you come across a Moment that’s worthwhile. At the end of the day, you may have spent $300 finding that one moment, but that’s just a fraction of what you would have buying an existing individual Moment.

In a nutshell, Moments have more upside when purchased in a pack. Existing Moments have already appreciated. Moments found in a pack drop are fresh and have much more runway to increase in value.

With all due respect to Michael Carter-Williams and Kelly Olynyk, but would you rather spend $2,500 on a Carter-Williams highlight, $1300 on a Olynyk layup or would you rather put your money down on 200 packs?

On top of that not only likely would have spent much less than purchasing an individual Moment, but using our example of 20 packs, you also have 59 additional Moments that could appreciate.

We should point out again (as commenters mentioned), pack drops are in high-demand and often limits the sale of one pack per user so this ROI formula assumes you can get in on multiple pack drops before they sell out – and it’s not an easy so take all that into consideration.

At the end of the day, it comes down to your comfort level, budget and understanding of the different factors that influence the price of Moments. However, if you’re just getting into NBA Top Shot and not sure how to proceed then you have two options: you can either learn more about what causes prices to go up and down or buy a pack during one of NBA Top Shot’s drops.