Donald Trump’s surreal line of NFT portraits sold out in a day – now trading for as much as $44,000
Former President Donald Trump has sold many self-branded products in his time. Trump tape. Trump Steaks. There was even a short-lived Trump Shuttle airline. And now, Trump NFTs—excuse me, Trump Digital Trading Cards.
The collection of 45,000 non-fungible tokens depicting Trump in absurdly heroic poses, each priced at $99, sold out within a day of last week’s “major announcement” of the fall. Political commentators had been waiting for news about Trump’s third presidential campaign. Instead we got JPGs. Thousands and thousands of them.
You can buy Astronaut Trump, Fighter Pilot Trump, Old West Sheriff Trump and Nascar Driver Trump. The man-of-the-people options include Trump the Welder and Trump the Hunter.
It was also Trump standing in front of Mount Rushmore, his face added to the monument, renamed Mount Trumpmore, or at the Hollywood sign, which now reads Trumpworld.
Clark Mitchell, Trump Digital Trading Card.
In a rare nod to realism, it’s Trump the golfer. (Some cards serve as advertisements for Trump golf courses, with backdrops of his greens in Dubai, West Palm Beach and the Bronx.)
“Unlike fan art you may see elsewhere, these are the first authorized Trump Digital Trading Cards ever made,” the FAQ for the project reads. (The drop also coincides with a contest to win a one-on-one meeting with Trump.)
“Essentially, these are personal digital collectibles or ‘trading cards’ that you can collect, collect, trade, etc.,” it explained. “Think of them like traditional baseball or basketball cards, but stored digitally so you never have to worry about physical damage.”
Clark Mitchell, Trump Digital Trading Cards.
Perhaps the most absurd image is of Trump shooting lasers from his eyes as he rips open his suit, Superman-style, to reveal tight spandex with a “T” logo. (The former reality TV star probably didn’t realize that the look also invites comparisons to Homelander, the murderously selfish superhero antagonist of the popular Amazon Prime series The boys.)
To create the artwork for the series, Trump and his team reached out to Clark Mitchell, an artist perhaps best known for his work in the Star Wars universe, creating official illustrations for crossover ads with companies such as Pepsi and Hasbro.
Clark Mitchell, Trump Digital Trading Card.
Mitchell has also become something of a favorite for celebrity NFT projects, having created artwork for drops by the likes of broken baseball star Pete Rose and aging action hero Sylvester Stallone.
Notably, the 2,515 NFTs of Trump revealing his superhero costume are a close match to a design Mitchell created for R&B singer Ginuwine in the classic Superman pose. Since the fall of Trump, Mitchell removed Instagram and Twitter posts of the lookalike artwork.
The artist did not respond to inquiries from Artnet News.
Clark Mitchell, Ginuwine NFT. The pose bears a striking resemblance to the artist’s design for Trump Digital Trading Cards.
As has become the norm with large NFT collections, there is a standard template of attributes of varying rarity, including 179 one-of-ones, representing 0.4 percent of the images. These include “Trump Force One” flying over a Trump figure with outstretched, comically oversized hands. (The former president has been particularly touchy when it comes to suggestions that he is small.)
Of the entire set of NFTs, 44,000 were available for purchase, presumably meaning Trump kept 1,000 for himself. That leaves $4.35 million pumped directly into Trump’s coffers (or at least those of the LLC that licenses his name) — plus a 10 percent resale royalty for sales on the secondary market.
“It’s another cheesy sad, he’s trying to cash in on his hardcore supporters,” CNN senior political analyst John Avlon said on CNN this morning. “It shows how fundamentally frivolous he is taking this position as president.”
Clark Mitchell, Trump Digital Trading Card.
The buyers included 115 collectors who purchased 45 NFTs each, guaranteeing themselves a seat at a Mar-a-Lago dinner with Trump, according to Dune Analytics. Another 17 people bought 100 NFTs, the maximum number allowed.
The current floor price for the collection is around $310, or more than three times the original price. At least one card from the series was listed for a resale price of one hundred trillion ETH, a number so large in dollars ($119,605,000,000,000,000) that I’m not sure there’s a word for it.
Clark Mitchell, Trump Digital Trading Card.
The card that has changed hands for the most money since the initial offering is a one-of-a-kind, “signed” photo of Trump in a tuxedo. It went for a surprisingly hefty 37 ETH ($43,644.46).
Trump’s NFT drop comes amid what has been dubbed crypto winter. And while his collection appears to have fared better than wife Melania Trump’s Head of the State Assemblywhich she was forced to buy herself due to lack of interest, Trump Digital Trading Cards didn’t exactly set the world on fire.
One Twitter user pointed out that the collection failed to crack the top 10 at OpenSea, being outsold by something called “The Legend of Cockpunch”.
Among those who chose not to buy is artist Andres Serrano, who spent several years acquiring obscure Trump merchandise for an art installation documenting the real estate mogul’s many bizarre business ventures.
“I stopped buying things for my Trump exhibit years ago,” Serrano told Artnet News. “But believe me, Trump doesn’t miss a beat or a beat!”
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