If you enjoy this article and want to get weekly notifications when new posts go live, subscribe to my e-mail list here. 

Curio Cards is an NFT project dating back to May 2017 and is the “oldest known Art NFT project on Ethereum” according to Opensea.io. 

The project was re-discovered in March of 2021 and has gotten attention in the past month as OG NFT projects are seeing revivals. 

With limited funds and a desire to get into the NFT space, I purchased 4 Curio Cards for $3,000 (about 1 ETH): 1 Apple, 2 Mona Lisa’s, and 1 BTC. 

I came from the sports card collectibles market and couldn’t ignore a project that pre-dates CryptoPunks, the dominant NFT on Ethereum. 

Please do your own research on NFTs and never spend more than you can afford to lose. Just because I own these cards does not mean you have to. I’m here to provide insight for you to make more informed decisions. 

The First NFT Art Sale on Ethereum

Source: Opensea.io

 I was most intrigued by card #1, The Apple as it was the card first sold in the set, making it the first-ever NFT art sale on Ethereum. 

Currently, there are 603 Apples on OpenSea.io with a floor price of 6.5 ETH. 

The card hit a peak price of 11.75 ETH on 8/6, but fell as low as 4.3 ETH just two days later. 

Using the Curio Card Sales bot, I documented every single sale dating back to March 29th to better understand the price cycles of this cad. 

Total Sales Data — March 29th, 2021–August 10th, 2021 

While there are 603 active Apples on OpenSea, a total of 1,809 were created at launch in 2017. 

932 Apple cards are held in wallets with no activity for 1,000 or more days, leaving a total active supply of 877 cards. You can get links to all the supply data you need for Curio Cards here. 

Below is the aggregated stats of Apple sales since March 29th: 

391 total sales 

308 sales in July + August 

1.09 ETH average purchase price 

64.85% of the supply bought and sold 

Monthly Sales Average Table 

Source: Startwithnfts.com

The resurgence of Curio Cards began in March but took hold in July. 43 Apples were sold from July 12th — July 14th, more than the previous 3 months combined. 

Apple prices hit peaks, retracted then hit new peaks. During the last peak, the card sold for 11.75 ETH, but dropped down as low as 4.3 ETH. 

Below, we’ll look at month-over-month growth as well as % growth since re-discovery back in March: 

Source: Startwithnfts.com

Despite the volatility of the card, we’re entering a phase of the card where more supply is bought at higher floor prices and the floor appears to be holding about 4 ETH, or month over month growth of 290%. 

Comparing Growth Cycles to CyptoPunks

Curio Cards pre-dates CryptoPunks, but the two are very different (and both very awesome) projects. Every project compares itself to CryptoPunks as a thesis to moon, but I was curious about the cycles that played out compared to Curio Cards. 

This is not intended to suggest that purely because of the CryptoPunks cycle, Curio Cards will experience the same trends. It’s simply a relative exercise to be more informed in my decisions. 

CryptoPunks has been trading since 2017, but September 2020 marked a significant increase in price and sales volume, thus is the start of this chart: 

Source: startwithnfts.com

From August 2020 to August 2021, the average CryptoPunk price has increased 5,000% (1.25 ETH to 64 ETH). This does not factor in ETH to USD conversion. 

During this time period, September saw month-over-month growth of 215%, followed by two months of growth, albeit smaller, until it saw negative month-over-month growth. 

No two projects will track exactly the same, but Curio Cards saw its explosive growth month and is tracking for the second month of growth, but likely a little smaller. It’s possible we see a similar pattern — one more month of growth followed by a retraction, but an overall increase since the start of the rediscovery. 

Key Takeaways

Even the top projects experience retractions and can take months to reach new highs. Very few projects will reach the same heights as CryptoPunks, but it shouldn’t be surprising if other projects experience pullbacks before additional growth. 

Even though it seems as if everything goes up in price every day, that’s not the case and is something you need to be prepared for across all projects. 

Looking at this data is a useful exercise to be practically optimistic about a project.