First-time collector's experience

I wanted to celebrate my first week as an Art Curator at Redlion and four continuous weeks of hosting my daily show on Twitter, the Daily NFT Show, where I showcase talented artists.

I set a budget for myself: 0.1ETH. That seemed reasonable for a first acquisition. Not much in a space where some pieces command many times that, but enough to get me something valuable.

I posted a tweet, asking people to showcase some of their work around this pricepoint. A couple of aesthetically pleasing works started to drip in. Some of the people replying to my posts were names I’d seen before, some completely new. I didn’t ignore the new names, but I would be lying if I said they were going to get an equal shot. I preferred supporting someone I had previously chatted or engaged with before.

I decided to extend my view and go on a little treasure (or, as I like to say: fortunes) hunt of my own. Surfing around different profiles I landed on Jadhesh’s account. I recognized his name—I had seen a video that he had created, a beautiful short movie about a boy and his dog, when I had first entered the NFT space.

Then I noticed he just released a new work. A short, fantasy-fiction movie. The first shot immediately caught my attention. I watched it a couple of times. The animation was good, the colors were done well. The storyline needed some work, but I saw potential, effort, talent and passion.

I decided to reach out to Jadhesh and chatted with him for a while. He sent me over five minutes of voice notes, explaining his background and everything about the artwork.

There was just one problem. The reserve price was set at 0.4ETH, and my budget was just 0.1ETH.

I took a few hours to think and eventually decided to go for it, and I’ll tell you why, as I think other artists (and maybe collectors) can learn from it. First, a disclaimer: I’d like to emphasize that I’m not a professional collector of any sort. I’m writing from my own experience here, and I hope it will help someone reading this.

Why I collected this NFT:

• Time spent: The artwork shows the hours of effort it took to be created, and years of skill development up to this point.
• Personal preference: I like the look of the video, the topic, the way it turned out.
• The artist:

1. Jadhesh took the time to chat with me and to explain everything behind his work and himself. 
2. Jadhesh engages with his community every day and he puts in the time and effort to market himself.

• Pricing: The work was priced higher than his previous release, which sold in just 15 hours. This, to me, shows that the artist knows how to incrementally increase the bar of his own work, which for me, as a collector, is important. I don’t want him to price his next pieces lower, decreasing the value of his previous work. After chatting with him, I know he won’t do this.

I spend a lot of time in this space, chatting with various artists, listening to others and, now, collecting. I’m learning a lot and can’t wait to find more hidden gems. Onto the next.