Donald Trump NFT collection sells out within hours

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Donald Trump’s NFT trading card collection sold out within hours of its introduction.
One holder with 1,000 cards in a wallet received an airdrop before the public sale, OpenSea figures show.
A 45,000 item NFT trading card collection created by the former U.S. president Donald Trump sold out within hours and has already racked up more than 648 ETH, or about $785,000, in trading volume, according to OpenSea data.

The public sale commenced Thursday night following a teaser of a "major announcement" and an unveiling on Trump's Truth Social account. The initial mint price was set at $99. Buying an NFT automatically entered the purchaser into a sweepstake, with prizes including a group cocktail party at Mar-A-Lago, a dinner in Miami or a golfing trip with the former president, or a group Zoom call.
Buying 45 or more NFTs would "guarantee" purchasers an invite to a gala dinner with the Republican in South Florida, the announcement said.

It appears there are already some Trump NFT whales among holders. Currently, 34 wallets hold 100 or more items from the collection. OpenSea figures also suggest that 1,000 of the NFTs were airdropped to one wallet hours before the public sale. The second-biggest holder currently owns 673 NFTs from the collection.

The Block contacted the project for more information on the wallet containing the 1,000 NFTs and the nature of the airdrop, but had not heard back by publication time.
The mint may have netted Trump almost $4.5 million. Creator fees set by OpenSea also give a 10% royalty on secondary sales, meaning the project will already have accrued almost $80,000 from trades to date.

Some items are already reselling for more than $7,000. An NFT collector called Nanitor bought a greyscale NFT of Trump in a Christmas hat for 6 ETH (or $7,200).

Trump follows his wife Melania onto the blockchain. The former first lady said she was working with Solana to launch her collection — a claim which was later denied by Solana Labs. “I wanted to inform you, to avoid any confusion, that her choice to use the Solana blockchain was completely organic and this project is not part of any Solana-led initiative,” a Solana representative wrote in an emailed statement at the time. MoonPay also denied involvement.

Donald Trump's collection was launched on Polygon, which is is fast becoming the blockchain mega corporations turn to to expand their crypto presence. Reddit chose the chain for its own set of collectable avatars, Meta's Instagram tapped it for its upcoming NFT marketplace and Starbucks used it for its web3 loyalty product.