Boy, I can hardly wait until we get initialized. Turns out it may cost more like $150 to do it, but we’ll soon see if we can squeak by. If not, be prepared for another two-week delay until the banks work it out.
Actually, I can wait a while — the auction season is not upon us — we are entering into the fifth season, which in the garment industry is called “the slack season” not because everybody’s wearing pants, but because there’s no business.
You have a wild midnight sale, and — crickets.
So I put up a bunch of raku-ware ceramics and another bunch of stuff, several month’s worth of instagram thumbnails, which I thought could be priced real real low, at something on the order of .01 Ether, which comes out to about $25.00 in US dollars.
These are one-of-a-kind, not multiples. You own the only one of that thing, whatever it is. I have posted a bingy-bongy bunch of them so everyone can have a chance to pick one up at this ridiculous price which won’t be repeated.
I say again, it won’t be repeated.
Dang, it just was.
Well, anyhow, if you go there today to my galleries on opensea (find them under “EJ Gold” in the website’s search bar) you’ll discover many great treasures that are not yet listed as “for sale”, because I can’t yet list them until I get initialized, and that might not happen for a while, but you can still look and get ideas.
That’s the important thing. You want to try this experimental practice, even if it’s totally alien to your species.
Just by getting people to buy the NFTs you make is actually going to change things drastically, in the form of expansion of our work circle, almost automatically just by doing this practice on a daily basis.
If you can achieve even one sale for one cent or one rupee or one peseta, you win the game!
Well, not exactly “win”, but you do get a gold star for trying. However, it might be well to actually master the practice and get some solid results.
You might be amazed at how much you can earn with NFTs, especially if you make them and don’t have to buy them, and even more so if you learn how to mint them FREE on opensea.io — it’s really quite friendly and easy there, the community seems nice, for a bunch of greedy money-hungry bastards, that is.
I’m joking. It’s a very friendly site and community with what I hope is a big, broad sense of humor. People who can recognize a joke when they hear one, especially jokes about the community, pokety-poke-poke-poke.
So pricing your NFTs — how to do this?
Well, you could put a few up for auction and see how they do among your circle of friends and family, which is all you’ll get for a while, unless YOU bring traffic there, which you might not have the skills or the inclination to do.
It’s all very social, and there’s a lot of interaction and replies and back and forths and tons of entanglement and involvement, and that’s a pain for most artists. The one thing I really appreciate about online art sales is that it’s online.
So I have a small gallery of about 15 pieces that are very high-end and for which I want to be paid a bunch.
They are all one-of-a-kind uniques. To give you an example, there’s a collection of letters between the Donner family, plus unpublished photos.
Well, actually, that’s the PHOTO of the Donner letters and photos. To tell the truth, those are nowhere near all the letters and photos and other memorabilia from the Donner family.
I might very well photograph some of the other letters and put them up for a ridiculously high price, too. Those are my family photos and letters and such, and I’m donating all of them for the community’s benefit.
So once someone coughs up $1.2 million for this Unique Historic Donner Party Non-Fungible Token, the whole mess can be delivered to the California State Museum or to the Donner Museum — I’m still deciding.
I also have an original Jackson Pollock drip painting, one that he threw at me and Dave van Ronk and Helen Frankenthaler and told us to take them and get rid of them, so we did, before he could take a skillsaw to the painted green-board.
It was my greenboard and my paint.
He wasn’t painting drips any more, just these dark rather tiny drab and gloomy paintings, but the guy who drove up in a convertible wanted a drip painting and was willing to pay cash for it — up to $350.
Pollock’s paintings were selling at Leo Castelli’s for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Pollock was a lush, and had a craving for beer.
He took the money and, with two girls from the local university, vanished down the road, leaving us holding our paintings.
That painting is not for sale, not now, not ever.
But a photo of me standing in front of it is for sale, for the same price as you’d have to pay for the original painting — about $5 million dollars at slow ill-attended auction somewhere in Northern Nebraska, or $55 million at Christie’s or Sotheby’s New York or London.
Hey, I have an account at both places — I wonder if they want some of my NFTs for their next big NFT auction???
They should, I’m a member of the Cedar Bar School and the Pop Art School, not to mention JazzArt — my portrait of Herbie Hancock is in the National Museum, and one of my paintings is in the collection of the Dalai Lama, and another in the collection of King Hussein of Jordan, and more.
Crowned Heads of Europe? You bet! Museum-Collected? Yes, indeed.
Problem is, can’t get my stuff in front of Those Who Count, meaning those folks who make the market and drive it ever-upward — that is, I can’t do it without YOUR help.
One thing you could do is visit my opensea.io collections — there are six galleries, and more are on the way, if I am any judge of horse-flesh.
I’ll be trying to do an auction, probably just one, at first, to see how it goes, before taking the plunge bigtime.
I’ll start the auction off at my minimum, which is .01 Ether — about $25.00 US Dollars, and I won’t put any reserve on it, so every bid is a working bid.
Well, I say that, but until I actually try putting one up, we won’t know, will we? And that has to wait until initilization, which might, as I said, take a while.
The low-priced stuff won’t make any money — at best, it’s a break-even for us, but we’ll gain experience in the application of this admittedly unusual Daily Practice.
If you do this right, you won’t need to keep the day job. If you falter and run, you should definitely keep the day job, and maybe get a second job just in case.
The thing is, if you know someone with a LOT of money and NO interest in art, this just might interest them, if only to make a buck, which is the major motivation for just about everyone who’s currently in the NFT game.
I appreciate the motivation. I can motivate myself without the greed factor, but I’m only too aware that it’s often what drives people to take meditation workshops or healing circles.
You don’t want to let on that these NFTs are spiritual tools and that they have a very real effect on all levels.
As a matter of fact, I’m preparing some elixirs, potions and body and burning oils, powders and incenses and candles — all in the form of NFTs, of course, and all guaranteed.
It doesn’t make clear what it is for which they are guaranteed, but guaranteed they are, guaranteed.
By God, if you’re not having fun in the NFT art market, where have you gone and stuck your head?
It’s not about the money, but it’s about the money. I’ll try to explain as best I can. It was the bottom of the ninth, and Mickey Mantle was up at bat.
What I mean is, the money is the focus, the driving force behind the art market, but not the art.
NFTs are not art, they represent art.
What makes them unique is the numbering so 1/1 means “one of one”, which translates to the fact that there is only one of this thing, and no more will ever be made, period.
If you decide to issue an edition of 10, you’ll have to list each one by hand, at least at the present time.
OpenSea is working on improving the way you can set up multiple offerings, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Auctions are a way to find out what the market is for your stuff, but I wouldn’t start out there — you just won’t have any bids until you have bids.
People only want to do what other people do, go where other people go, and buy what other people buy. If EVERYBODY wants a Cabbage Patch Doll, they no longer sell for a few bucks, do they?
That’s what you need — a feeding frenzy.
Well, how about having an auction, just one piece, starting at a dollar? You won’t make anything, but you certainly will see the actual unvarnished market right before your eyes, and you might not like what you see.
It’s a long haul to get a following, and the road is unpleasant and rough, the risk is great, and the reward is small.
So why do it?
Because it’s a great practice, and success at this task means that your higher work will get automatically advanced at the same time.
It’s not a direct-drive. Your work-benefit is actually collateral damage from the actual task, that of making and selling NFTs, and that can include buying, selling and trading mine.
You’re certainly welcome to try trading my NFTs — they should sell far above what you’re going to pay for them.
I only put a price on them at all to make it somewhat hard to just take something because it’s free. These are not. The lowest price on my NFTs is .01 ETH, and that’s just to make it worthwhile to list it.
Think of it as a donation to the community, although it’s not. Technically, you’re getting value, so you can’t claim it as a donation, although you CAN claim inanimate objects as dependencies, if you’ve got a good tax lawyer.
I would never claim inanimate objects as dependencies, at least not the plush toys — they all have outside jobs.
Look, here’s a chance to find out if you’ve got any skills, any talents whatever, in the art area, and if you don’t, here’s your chance to remedy the situation!
Arts, crafts, those skills will get you far in this game, but you don’t have to be an artist to create an NFT — all you need is courage.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby