How to value your Bored Ape Yacht Club assets
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs — unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain from Yuga Labs. Launched only a few months ago, on April 23, 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club has shown strong performance and created great excitement in the digital collectible space. Some of these collectibles have sold for millions of dollars on secondary markets, catching the attention of celebrities and influencers. Indeed, the total trading volume has already reached over $467.96 million.
Each Bored Ape is unique and programmatically generated from over 170 possible traits, including expression, headwear, clothing, and more. All apes are dope, but some are rarer than others. So, which of these features play a major role in the evaluation?
Table of contents
The power of Bored Ape Yacht Club's features
Perks of holding one of the Bored Apes
The Mutant Ape Yacht Club airdrop
Closing thoughts
The power of Bored Ape Yacht Club's features
Similar to other NFT collections, traits enhance the value and uniqueness of each single piece within a whole collection. Within the collection, the Apes are not classified by types, however, each Bored Ape may include from 4 to 7 of the different traits depending on the random trait generation that give each piece a certain level of scarcity. The number of traits plays in reverse in the collection meaning that among the most common are Apes with six traits (53%) followed by those with five traits (25%), and seven traits (19%) while those with four traits are the rarest ones (3%).
For example, there is a positive correlation between price and certain types of eyes. More precisely, Apes with blue beam eyes (0.49%) were sold at a higher price on secondary markets. Laser (0.69%) and cyborg (1.08%) eyes were also highly valued. One other trait that seems to have a strong influence on the value of Bored Apes is their fur. The rarest fur among the Apes is solid gold (0.46%); the next rarest fur is trippy (0.77%) and the fur of the death robot (1.75%).
For instance, Bored Ape Yacht Club #3749 is one of just 3% of Apes that sport a black t-shirt, one of 3% with a sea captain’s hat, and one of 4% with a grin on its face. It is also one of just 69 that has laser eyes and one of just 46 that has solid gold fur. Most recently, Bored Ape #3749 was sold for 400 ETH ($1.29 million at the time of sale) on OpenSea. It is a new record for the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection and is currently the most expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT.
On the other hand, the background color seems to be the one less correlated with the asset price. There are eight different colors that are evenly distributed among all monkeys. The range of color probability varies from 11.70% (gray) to 12.91% (purple).
It is important to note that aesthetics add an additional layer to the valuation. While unique items are highly sought after, the combination of two less rare traits can give an Ape the mood and the style that someone is looking for in particular. This indicates that aesthetics play an important role in buyer preferences.
Perks of holding one of the Bored Apes
As outlined on the official website, when you buy a Bored Ape, you’re not simply buying an avatar or a provably rare piece of art. You are gaining membership access to a club whose benefits and offerings will increase over time. Your Bored Ape can serve as your digital identity, and open digital doors for you.
Currently, perks of holding one of these Apes avatars include accessing a digital graffiti wall, known as The Bathroom Wall, or adopting a virtual dog. The Bathroom Wall is a members-only space where the community can draw pixels on a digital board every fifteen minutes. It contains a canvas accessible only to wallets containing at least one ape. Think of it as a public room reserved for club members where each one communicates, a sort of collaborative art experience in the cryptosphere.
In addition, the Bored Apes community launched a member-exclusive merchandise store. Therefore, Ape owners could reflect their ownership into real life.
In June, Yuga Labs rewarded the owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club with another NFT piece - club members were able to adopt an NFT Club Dog from the Bored Ape Kennel Club. According to the BAYC official website, “It gets lonely in the swamp sometimes. That's why every ape should have a four-legged companion. To curl up at your feet. To bring you a beer. To fire a missile launcher at that fucking monkey Jimmy.”
Claiming the token is free for the club members (only gas fee to be paid). There are 10,000 total Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs. The dogs that accompany their Ape friends, have doubled the success achieved by the Yacht Club. The most expensive Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT was sold for $166.5k on 2021-09-01.
The Bored Ape Kennel Club collection will have a 2.5% royalty fee associated with secondary sales on OpenSea. All proceeds generated from this fee will be donated to charity.
Future areas and perks can be unlocked by the community through the project’s roadmap activation.
The Mutant Ape Yacht Club airdrop
Most recently, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club project have announced the release of a new series of non-fungible tokens that can be obtained by using a special Mutant Serum on the collectibles from the original Bored Ape Yacht Club series. The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) is made up of 20,000 new Mutant Apes, half of which could be created by exposing an existing Bored Ape to a vial of Mutant Serum and the other half by minting a Mutant Ape in the public sale.
Using Chainlink VRF technology, the BAYC team randomly distributed Mutation Serums to users, who could then create mutants by exposing their Bored Apes to the serum by just paying the gas fees.
The Mutant Serum vials feature three levels: M1, M2 and M3 "Mega Mutant". Mutants created using M1 or M2 serum will retain all the traits of the original ape. However, nobody knows what will happen when an ape is introduced to M3 serum.
Soon after the airdrop, the Serums were traded at sky-high prices on marketplaces. For instance, one holder was offered 269 ETH (or about $872,000) for the Serum! The Mutant raised around US$96 million within just an hour. The most expensive Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT was sold for $1.1M on 2021-08-29.
Closing thoughts
When valuing the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, you should keep in mind to not only focus on the number of traits or their scarcity, but also consider aesthetics and as well as external factors such as club membership.
By building a genuine club-like community, Bored Ape Yacht Club is definitely revolutionary in the NFT sector. Furthermore, the collection feels already well established. The strong tie with the community and the added utility make Bored Ape Yacht Club a very attractive asset in the market