2026 has been a year of collecting provenance.
What’s been most fun is watching my wife understand more and more why it’s become so important to me when it comes to our family.
Art and stories will outlive us.
Might as well invest in them and keep the legacy going.
I love seeing the people who buy @SamSpratt pieces because they're a different type of holder.
Most of these pieces are bought because people genuinely connect with the art and the story Sam brings to the space. (If you haven’t checked his site I highly suggest doing so***)
That’s the reason there are only 8 listed out of 600+.
I love my Mask, The Strive. I have no plans to ever sell it because my goal is to pass it down to my kids one day.
Here’s my negatively charged USMNT post-mortem:
I’ve seen the USMNT crash out of many tournaments but this was the most painful and it will take longer to get over.
The 1st and 3rd goals simply cannot happen at this level. Those mistakes transcend any technical or tactical analysis. For that to happen in the biggest game of these players’ lives…
Of course I can say this in hindsight, but all the noise around the game was UNHELPFUL. I think Balo’s red card was the wrong decision but the momentum behind the team was still at an all time high.
The administration getting involved over something with little material impact on the pitch has turned out to be a disaster, a common occurrence when non-soccer people get involved in soccer. That created the momentum behind a Belgium that were completely out of sync up until that point.
The sheer amount of technical errors in that game on the ball was bizarre, it’s impossible to know the cause but I assume something psychological. Basic actions you’d expect players to execute 9/10 times.
My cynical view is that performance undid a lot of the good about the tournament thus far. It was diabolically bad.
I will be ruminating about this for a while.
It’s nice because it’s not a quick flip for most holders. There’s hardly any meaningful volume on a 24-hour basis which takes away the degen/speculation aspect for the most part. More often than not, when a piece sells, it’s because someone has been eyeing it for a while before finally deciding to acquire it. I’m not saying this is the right way to go about the space I’m saying it’s cool to see something different.
“What do Azuki holders get from TCG?”
“Azuki has pivoted away from web3”
“Azuki has betrayed its collectors”
“Azuki is a slow rug”
“Azuki bad”
All these sentiments have been thrown in the timeline this 2026 for Azuki. How do they respond?
By doing dope shit (as they always do)
And by doing so they attract new collectors or change the minds of their current collectors about the direction that they’ve taken
I haven’t been a big fan of Azuki’s direction this year (like most of web3) but consider me impressed by their presence in Anime Expo + how it’s translating afterwards
In the last 7 days, Azuki has moved from 0.8 ETH+ FP to 1.2 ETH+ FP rn 👏
IKZ! @Azuki ⛩️
I think it was more about how everything unfolded. Trump calling FIFA, the flat-footed start, the goalkeeper mishap, and the overall level of play all played into it.
Tbh, I think this team could hang with Belgium a lot better than they showed tonight. They looked like a completely different team out there than the last 4 weeks.