Why everyone needs a #RarePepe in their wallet?
These aren't just memes; they're the OG #NFTs minted back in 2016 on #Counterparty , predating CryptoPunks and Bored Apes by years.
Owning one is like holding a piece of digital history 🐸🚀
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 18, Card 45 - PEPEATARI. The creator of the card is unknown. This is a 1/2,600 card with a current floor price of .005 BTC ($387 USD).
90 wallets hold a copy of this card and the largest holder controls 93.85% of the total supply (2,440/2,600).
This is a pretty simple one. The creator took the Atari logo and added "Pepe" above it in the same font. Behind it he added a pixelated cartoon frog that resembles Pepe. Presumably they chose 2,600 as the mint number as an homage to the 1977 home gaming system the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) which was renamed the Atari 2600 in November 1982.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. While arcade games were the company's primary business they quickly realized that the home gaming market would be much more lucrative. The Atari 2600 sold for $189.95 (equivalent to $1,010 in 2025) and went on to sell 30 million units. The console came with 2 joystick controllers, a pair of paddle controllers, and one game - initially Combat and later Pac-Man.
There are roughly 470 - 500 officially licensed, unique titles for the Atari 2600, though total counts including variations and homebrew games can exceed 900.
Further reading -
Atari, Inc. - https://t.co/fCbFOGOkaa.
Atari 2600 - https://t.co/eKinD7YnHQ
List of Atari 2600 games - https://t.co/2ykBzrqWgo
Nolan Bushnell - https://t.co/eBHdDzLHYq
Ted Dabney - https://t.co/IguJwuXaYN
Joystick - https://t.co/fkObr7jY41
Combat (video game) - https://t.co/YLreEMQn4c
Pac-man (Atari 2600 video game) - https://t.co/v8LDFzou1b
The Atari 2600 Project - All 511 games - https://t.co/H1D19Iihi4
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 1, Card 5 - DANKPEPE by @shawnleary. This is a 1/420 (obviously) card with a current floor price of .015 BTC ($1,166 USD).
192 wallets hold a copy of this card and the largest holder controls 26.2% of the total supply (110/420).
I hope everyone had a fantastic 4/20 today. I thought it only fitting that I should feature DANKPEPE as it is the first tokenized drug reference ever.
Here Shawn gives us a cartoon Pepe holding a real joint. His eyes are red from overindulgence which he is attempting to hide with his 8-bit shades. Behind him is a weed farm. The text "Pepe always has the dankest meme" is a modified version of the saying "xxxx (insert your favorite city/country here) has the dankest weed"
The rareness score has a personal meaning to the creator (which I know, but won't divulge here).
Further reading:
Dank - https://t.co/OQ2k9l9r6F
List of names for cannabis - https://t.co/mNuyFELnUi
Cannabis - https://t.co/DGftK2bGJI
The Rare Pepe directory turns 10 this year.
We are celebrating this historically significant date with six lots at BMAG; physical objects, original cards, microfilm archives. All part of Bitcoin Las Vegas 26. 🧵
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 9, Card 28 JOINTPEPE. The creator of the card is unknown. This is a 1/21,000 card with none for sale as of the time of this writing. The last sale was for $53,000 USD in 2021.
Only 3 wallets hold a copy of this card. The largest holder has 4/21,000.
The other 99.97% of the supply (20,994/21,000) are in the creator's wallet which hasn't had a transaction in 9 years meaning this could be a 1/6 card (NFA, DYOR).
The card portrays Bob Marley's famous dreadlocks with Pepe's face and a lit joint. Behind him are the colors of the Jamaican flag and behind that, live marijuana plants. The text is a bid nonsensical but I think it's trying to say that a joint will help you relax, become dank, and level up.
The original photo of Marley was taken in 1979 by Johnnie Black.
Robert Nesta Marley (6 Feb. 1945 - 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist and considered one of the pioneers of reggae. His top selling album Legend is the top-selling reggae album ever with over 30 million copies sold.
Further reading/viewing:
Bob Marley - https://t.co/FzFqdv9x95
Legend - https://t.co/XlOYo1CX2m
Official website - https://t.co/GBf51GPdpF
Johnnie Black (photographer) - https://t.co/AHrfVperdV
Bob Marley and the Legends live at the Santa Barbara Bowl 1979 - https://t.co/FwbFU5yny8
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 3, Card 22 - MARVINPEPE by @djangobits. This is a 1/42 card with a current floor price of 1.88 BTC ($138,782 USD).
31 wallets hold a copy of this card with the largest holder controlling 14.28% of the total supply (6/42).
This card is a mashup of a character, book and movie. It features the character Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book and movie of the same name, but with his head replaced by Pepe. This is where the card title comes from as well, having been changed to "Pepe, the Paranoid Frogbot."
Behind Marvin is the Primary Control Console from the spaceship "Heart of Gold" from the movie.
The text below the title "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed" is a direct line spoken by Marvin in the book/movie.
The main text on the card is a poem entitled "Marvin's lullaby (How I Hate the Night)" which appeared in Doglas Adams' book Life, the Universe and Everything (the third novel in the Hitchhiker series).
The Full Lullaby (as written in the book)
“Now the world has gone to bed,” Marvin droned, “Darkness won't engulf my head,
“I can see by infra-red,
“How I hate the night.”
He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
“Try to count electric sheep,
“Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
“How I hate the night.”
The mint number of the card (42) refers to the supercomputer Deep Thought's statement, “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything… is 42.”
The font used on the card appears to be hand-made.
Further reading/viewing:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - https://t.co/YR9415LBtt
Douglas Adams (author) - https://t.co/j5BLtHTD08
Book review by The Guardian - https://t.co/HuxYDvJrt7
Best of Marvin (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - https://t.co/PP5ZUAt3Ce
Movie Trailer - https://t.co/mHf9wjjPc8
IMDB - https://t.co/4tFGRIS2Bo
Douglas Adams on David Letterman (14 Feb. 1985) - https://t.co/w3KY25vDI2
The unlikely origins of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | BBC Global - https://t.co/ILjlDMbR9g
Douglas Adams: His Life, the Universe, and Everything - https://t.co/N36PluPThC
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 7, Card 37 - PEPEZCASH by @CryptoChainer. This is a 1/1,000,105 with a circulating supply of 1,000,104 after one was sent to the burn address 1BurnPepexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAK33R.
295 wallets hold a copy of the card and the current floor price is .000015 BTC ($1.00 USD).
This card pokes fun at the cryptocurrency Zcash giving it an unknown rareness score and proclaiming it is "backed by dreams" and "sort of anonymous." Chainer used a 2016 GIF of Kim Kardashian replacing her face with Pepe's and one dollar bills with ZCASH "tokens" as the card's focal point.
Zcash launched in 2016 and it's stated purpose was financial privacy. It offers both transparent transactions (like Bitcoin) and shielded transactions (private). This is done by using the cryptographic technique called Zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs).
The irony is that between 2016 and 2020 shielded usage was basically unused (less than 5% of all transactions). The token traded between $700 and $3,000 at its height before crashing to an all time low of $16 in 2024. As of the time of this writing, it is trading at $349.22.
Further reading:
Zcash official website - https://t.co/NHNbgfgW80
Zcash Foundation - https://t.co/qCRw9giFcL
Zcash - https://t.co/gE99H5e5rN
Non-interactive zero-knowledge proof - https://t.co/gr8F2gpHwG
Kim Kardashian West on Her Favorite Kimojis (June 20, 2016) - https://t.co/yXW1IGBjVd
Kim Kardashian - https://t.co/yolzD4QhUB
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 22, Card 12 - DOGSALL by @booo_urnsz. This is a 1/200 card with a current floor price of .0015 BTC ($112 USD).
This card has excellent distribution with 168 holders. The largest wallet holds just 7 copies. This is due in part to a 2021 Dutch auction by @pepedrops_io where 130 DOGSALL were put up for sale in a 2 hour window with a starting price of 2 ETH and an ending price of 0 ETH. Unsold copies were to be burned. Thankfully, it was a sellout and none had to be sacrificed to Kek.
I chatted with Boo yesterday about his one and only Rare Pepe card, and learned quite a bit. As the story goes, both Boo and @wasthatawolf are fans of mattress surfing (basically trying to ride them as they were tossed off 2nd story balcony’s) and were in the same online chat about the topic. In early 2017 Mr. Wolf began trying to educate Boo about Rare Pepes and the wallet he was working on (https://t.co/sMvZCO9Xt6).
Boo brushed it off as stupid and annoying. He didn't believe people were actually selling pictures of frogs for $20 - $100 each. But eventually, he wanted to see if it was true. He wasn't involved with Counterparty at all and just started submitting images. The Scientists rejected them all for being "low effort." This irritated Boo to no end, as he could see what was being published in the directory and thought his stuff was just as good if not better.
He was undeterred though and thought to himself, "screw it. If effort doesn’t matter, I’ll go even lower." So he submitted text with a couple pieces of clipart. And according to Boo, "the Scientists lost their minds." They said it was out of this world. That they had never seen anything like it. A text-based Pepe.
With acceptance behind him, he then had to create the token. He didn't realize that the name even mattered. To him it was just a filename. So he choose "DOGSALL" which is short for the title of the Disney movie All Dogs Go To Heaven. To Boo it was "a phrase I’ve always liked. There’s something real in it. Like no matter what happens, whatever you go through, you still come out the other side as something that mattered."
The text Boo submitted was a pepefied version of the 1933 Russian animal fable "The Scorpion and the Frog".
Further reading/viewing:
The Scorpion and the Frog - https://t.co/Fl0LCGUNlp
The Scorpion and the Frog: A Fable for Contemporary Times - https://t.co/HCFPovsuEO
The Scorpion and the Frog - https://t.co/QUTMFDYmDs
The Famous Story of the Frog and the Scorpion - Fables of the World - See U in History - https://t.co/O0zMcFjqup
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 27, Card 3 - THEKINGPEPE by Bora Boris. This is a 1/200 card with circulating supply of 100 after 100 were sent to the burn address 1BurnPepexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAK33R
The current floor price is .03 BTC ($2,242 USD). 47 wallets hold a copy of the card and the largest holder controls 24% of the circulating supply (24/100).
This appears to be an original caricature drawing of American singer and actor Elvis Pressley in his famed white jumpsuit. Elvis' signature hair style (jet-black, heavily groomed pompadour with long sideburns) is also featured in the image.
Elvis Aaron Presley (Jan. 8, 1935 - Aug. 16, 1977) was often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" and is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. For all his fame and fortune, he was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination. Thousands of pages have been written about the man so I won't bore you with it all here.
Further reading/viewing:
Elvis Presley - https://t.co/9NS3TW5ah5
Early life of Elvis Presley - https://t.co/im21uY8boE
The "best" Elvis books - https://t.co/qulUN7KTwU
Elvis Presley Love Me Tender (movie) 1956 - https://t.co/oN9kROabBO
Elvis performing in the white jumpsuit (Aloha from Hawaii 1973) - https://t.co/66ZmKbDMWW
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 11, Card 25 - PEPEENEUMAN. The creator of the card is unknown. This is a 1/256 card with a circulating supply of 247 after 9 were sent to the burn address 1BurnPepexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAK33R.
The current floor price is .00436 BTC ($309 USD). 50 wallets hold a copy of the card with the largest holder controlling 52% of the circulating supply (128/247). The creator's wallet has 53/247.
This is a pepefied version of Mad Magazine's mascot Alfred E. Neuman. The original was from Mad #30 which was painted by Norman Mingo.
The card features tiny doodles of the characters Spy vs. Spy which are commonly seen inside Mad Magazine. Known as "Mad Marginals" or Drawn-out Dramas". The feature debuted in Mad #76.
Alfred's catch phrase, "What Me Worry?" has been changed to "What, Me Pepe?" At the very bottom is Morse code which reads RARE PEPE. There is also the word "Psybin" which could be the artist's pseudonym.
Images of Alfred date back to the mid 1800's but his Mad debut occurred in November 1954 on the front cover of Ballantine's The Mad Reader. He then appeared on the comic book Mad #21 (March 1955) and finally on issue of the magazine format issue #24. The magazine is still in print to this day and often features Neuman on the cover.
Further reading:
Alfred E. Neuman - https://t.co/Dzl9u3dWoK
Mad Magazine - https://t.co/RCjUQ1nCJJ
Norman Mingo (illustrator) - https://t.co/HIv5DHGF0p
Spy vs. Spy - https://t.co/1iVWa36c1P
Sergio Aragoneés (Marginals illustrator) - https://t.co/rHXoIiqSJZ
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 32, Card 21 - PAXOLOTL by 0jak. This is a 1/100 card with a current floor price of .0011 BTC ($81 USD).
76 wallets hold a copy of this card and the largest holder controls 14% of the total supply (14/100).
This appears to be an original drawing of a pepefied axolotl. These little guys are cute AF but a Pepe/axolotl hybrid? Best pet ever.
The axolotl is a critically endangered, fully aquatic salamander known for retaining its juvenile features like external gills throughout its life. They can only be found only in Mexico City's Lake Xochimilco.
Axolotls are known for their remarkable ability to regenerate parts of their bodies, including limbs, gills and parts of their eyes and brains.
Further reading/viewing:
Axolotl - https://t.co/oNnQXVt7wM
Axolotls: Meet the amphibians that never grow up - https://t.co/ecL5OZ9EBr
Facts about axolotls - https://t.co/9vHT7RUNXj
Lake Xochimilco - https://t.co/PRd41HLmeO
Mexico City - https://t.co/mjvaKcu0gI
The Insane Biology of: The Axolotl - https://t.co/EOS263Y4Nu
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 6, Card 45 - PEPEZ. The creator is unknown. This is a 1/1,927 card with a current floor price of .004 BTC ($275 USD).
163 wallets hold a copy of the card and the creator wallet controls 82.25% of the total supply (1,585/1,927).
The card is a parody of the classic PEZ dispenser which was first marketed as a compressed peppermint sweet in Vienna, Austria in 1927 (the mint number of the token) by Eduard Haas III. The name PEZ is an abbreviation of PfeffErminZ (German for peppermint). The surprise reveal on this card is that there is no candy inside the dispenser. Instead there is a Wojak!
The dispensers with heads were first introduced in 1950 and there are now over 1500 different PEZ dispensers. The closest one I could find that resembles Pepe is part of the Merry Music Makers series which is simply called "Frog Whistle". It is said that billions of PEZ candies are consumed annually in the U.S.A alone.
Further reading/viewing:
MoMo PEZ free online PEZ Database - https://t.co/CUONgvCKQ3
PEZ - https://t.co/TTGnK1pUYv
Eduard Haas - https://t.co/UTQhozF9UH
Vienna - https://t.co/4yjW7lOBdB
Wojak - https://t.co/qfC0ZQR2i5
Meet the man with the ultimate Pez collection - https://t.co/KgWDVp2LXx
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 2, Card 48 - SPACEDADDY. The creator of the card is unknown. This is a 1/2,024 card with a circulating supply of 299 after 1,725 copies were sent to the burn address 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr.
The current floor price is .00525 BTC ($351 USD) and 169 wallets hold a copy of this card. The largest holder controls 14.7% of the total available supply (44/299).
The card is lampooning SpaceX founder, Elon Musk and his ambitious plan to colonize Mars. In a 2016 keynote talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress Musk was asked if he wanted to be the first to go. His reply is basically what the card creator added to the bottom in red, "I don't think so. I'm not really sure. I'd have to have a really good succession plan because the likelihood of death is very high."
He also calls Musk "Emperor Daddy", added the term "Space Capitalism" and a propaganda-style line: "Send People to Die on Mars For Glorious Space Future."
The line "See You Space Cowboy" is from the anime Cowboy Bebop which makes sense because the series follows a crew of bounty hunters traveling on their spaceship.
Finally, there is a reference to Falcon Heavy's which are massive rockets built by SpaceX to carry heavy payloads into space and an image of the planet Mars.
Further reading:
Elon Musk - https://t.co/72MTqRSH73
Business Insider article about Mars missions - https://t.co/cYngU0br1w
SpaceX - https://t.co/OUnunzGK32
Mars - https://t.co/yLwO2lyogB
Falcon Heavy - https://t.co/E7OVMKZ0KF
International Astronautical Congress - https://t.co/BlIqS3UwZ3
Cowboy Bebop - https://t.co/aNMELkrVQi
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 7, Card 43 - SGTPEPE. The creator of the card is unknown. A search for "papayuca" (bottom right of card) did not yield any results. This is a 1/200 card with a current floor price of .5 BTC ($34,223 USD).
Only 16 wallets hold a copy of this card and the creator's wallet controls 79% of the total supply (158/200). The last time anything moved from the wallet was 5 years ago.
This appears to be an original drawing which parodies the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The original photo of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr was taken by photographer Michael Cooper in his studio located in the Chelsea area of London on March 30, 1967. The contract for the creation of the album cover totaled 3,000 British pounds. For comparison, the average album cover at the time could be created for 50 pounds.
The day-glo military uniforms were designed specifically for the photoshoot. Paul and George attached MBE medals they had been awarded two years previously. John wore medals he borrowed from the mother of former Beatles drummer Pete Best.
The card's stats are all references to the band and the song. ATK=1967 (the year the photo was taken), DEF=4 (the 4 band members), BEAT=2:02 (the duration of the song - 2 minutes and 2 seconds).
The quote on the card is a modified song lyric. Originally, "Let me introduce to you the one and only Billy Shears and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was changed to "Pepe Shears" and "Sgt. Pepe's".
The Beatles - https://t.co/2nk5PtPY3S
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - https://t.co/KJJ9xR2fpI
Michael Cooper (photographer) - https://t.co/yC1GTF7ABn
The Day The Beatles Shot the "Sgt. Pepper' Cover Photo article - https://t.co/e9G7EbCODx
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) medal explained - https://t.co/7xhatld6pS
Today's Rare Pepe Lore Lesson™️ is Series 22, Card 47 - PEPESOURCE by @ScrillaVentura. This is a 1/111 card with none for sale as of the time of this writing. The last sale occurred on August 9, 2025 for $201 USD.
48 wallets hold a copy of this card. Scrilla is the largest holder with 42.34% of the total supply (47/111).
This card is a direct parody of The Source’s March 2004 cover (Issue No. 174). Scrilla replaced 10 mug shots of hip-hop artists with 10 hip-hop themed Rare Pepe cards. Thus his version is "Hip-Hop Pepes Behind Bars". The tag line has been changed from "The Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics" to "The Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Pepes & Politricks".
The question posed by The Source (Are Rappers the New Target of America's Criminal Justice System) has been changed to "RAREPEPES".
The date above the barcode has been changed from March 2004 to July 2017 (the month and date the token was minted) and the price in USD and CAN to XCP & PCASH (the De Facto currencies of the Counterparty ecosystem).
The artists on the original cover are:
Shyne, Suge Knight, C-Murder, Shyheim, Chi-Ali, J-Dee, Steady B, Mysonne, Mystikal, and Pimp C.
The Rare Pepe cards included on the cover are:
PEPEMILLION (Scrilla), MOBBPEPE (@wasthatawolf)
PEPEGOAT (Scrilla), BIGGIEPEPE (@shawnleary)
PEPEMANE (Cache Money), STILLPEPE (wasthatawolf), PWAPWAPWAPWA (Scrilla), PEPETANGCLAN (Scrilla), EAZYP (@bettidlomas), and LEANPEPE (ICQPEPE)
Cards mentioned at the bottom of the cover are:
BOYZIIPEPE (Scrilla), PEPECENT (@EverydayEarth),
RUNDMP (Scrilla), and RARESLIMPEPE (unknown).
Further reading:
The Source (magazine) - https://t.co/UAjdvvH4xO
Hip-Hop - https://t.co/UdBJjre3Al
Issue 174 of The Source (for sale) - https://t.co/mX1HbDwjo0