What are they and are they worth collecting?

Rare Pepe NFTs aren’t the most popular digital art collectibles, but they do have an interesting history. Read on to find out what rare Pepe NFTs are, why they are relevant in Bitcoin culture, and whether or not you should consider collecting them.

What is Rare Pepe?

Rare Pepe is a subset of “Pepe the Frog”, a character who first appeared in 2005 in Mark Furie’s cartoon, “Boy’s Club”.

Pepe the Frog is a green anthropomorphic cartoon with a human body. The cartoon character became an internet meme in 2008 thanks to its popularization on the social networks Gaia Online, MySpace and 4chan.

In 2015, Pepe the Frog memes began to be used with hateful intent by the alt-right movement and white supremacists when Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency.

The following year, Furie collaboration with the Anti-Defamation League in a social media campaign using #SavePepe to reclaim the symbol from those who used it to spread prejudice.

In 2014, a variation of Pepe the Frog memes called rare Pepes appeared on a 4chan board. They were distributed as trading cards, and some had watermarks that said, “RARE PEPE DOES NOT SAVE.” This meant that the artist had not published the image for public use. The following year in April, a collection of 1,200 rare Pepes was listed on eBay. They reached a high price of $99,166 before being taken down. More rare Pepe memes were listed on eBay and Craigslist.

Rare Pepe cards on counterpart: The original NFTs (before they were called NFTs)

Thanks to their popularity, it’s perhaps not surprising that Pepe the Frog and rare Pepes made their way into the crypto space. They appeared on Counterparty – an open source protocol built on top of Bitcoin – as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in 2016. This was before the existence of Ethereum NFTs. At that time, the term NFT was not even in use yet.

The launch of Rare Pepe NFTs was influenced by the famous 2015 Spells of Genesis SATOSHICARD. The first rare Pepe NFTs were mined on Bitcoin’s block 428,919.

The rare Pepe images at Counterparty looked like trading cards and were minted in limited quantities. Through the Rare Pepe Wallet, users could buy, sell and store their Rare Pepe NFT cards. Users traded these NFTs using a cash card called PepeCash.

Furthermore, collectors could submit their own rare Pepe photos to the rare Pepe catalog. This was a catalog of all known rare Pepes. The submission guidelines were strict. They read:

“Submissions must be ORIGINAL. Our quality team examines each Pepe for rarity. (no stealing!) Our experts understand that many of Pepes borrow from each other to some extent, but try to add as much original content as possible. Also make sure Pepe is moist. Check recent submissions in the catalog to compare.

The cost of submission was about $13 worth of PepeCash at the time. The Rare Pepe Foundation removed all offensive rare Pepes that were submitted before they were visible in the catalog.

As the NFT community grew, Furie started his own NFT project called Pegs. PegzDAO sells NFTs according to its signature style. In October 2021, Pegz, in collaboration with NFT marketplace Chainsaw, auctioned a rare Pepe NFT card called FEELSGOODMAN. It was one of 500 tokens originally minted in 2016 by Rare Pepe Wallet creator Joe Looney. FEELSGOODMAN aimed to bring peace between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities. Of the 500 tokens, 400 were burned, and one was auctioned. The proceeds from the auction and the remaining 99 NFTs went to PegzDAO.

How much have rare Pepe NFTs sold for?

In a January 2018 live auction held in New York City (NYC), a rare collectible of Pepe from Homer Simpson – at the time they were simply known as collectibles or crypto collectibles – sold for $39,000. This was the first digital art auction in history. Many people online criticized the buyer, Peter Kell, for making such an expensive purchase on something that to them seemed worthless. Three years later, however, Kell sold Homer Pepe for $312,000.

In addition to Kell’s NFT, the 2021 NFT craze saw other rare Pepe NFTs sell for astounding amounts. Some collectors used a software protocol called Emblem Vault to reconfigure rare Pepe digital cards so they could also run on the Ethereum blockchain. They then listed the “wrapped” rare Pepes on the NFT market Open seawhere someone sold for too much money.

For example, a rare Pepe created around Bitcoin’s founder Satoshi Nakamoto went for $149.99 ETH, which was roughly $500,000 at the time. Another copy of the same rare Pepe NFT sold for slightly less at 111.1 ETH.

However, not all rare Pepe NFT trades have ended well. The buyer of Furie’s FEELSGOODMAN NFT defendant Furie for over $500,000 in March 2022 on the basis that NFT was not rare enough. The buyer, who won the auction mentioned earlier in this article, paid 150 ETH for the NFT, which was over $500,000 at the time. According to the lawsuit,

“Thayer believed that he would be the owner of the only FEELSGOODMAN card NFT in circulation, while the other 99 were locked into the DAO.”

However, the remaining NFTs were distributed to PegzDAO members for free, reducing the value of Thayer’s NFTs.

Are rare Pepe NFTs worth collecting?

Rare Pepe NFTs are not as popular as Bored Apes or Crypto Punks. For this reason, these NFTs usually do not sell as much and as high as these two highly rated NFT collections.

Looking at current OpenSea entries, rare Pepe NFTs (on Ethereum) are bidding or have been sold for less than 1 ETH. So if you want to collect these NFTs with the goal of cashing out big, your chances may be low unless you have an extremely rare 1/1 card. Still, if your goal isn’t financial gain and you just love rare Pepe NFTs, you can still collect them for their value as art.

In addition to Ethereum-based Rare Pepe NFTs, you can also purchase items from the original collection that are still on Counterparty protocol at a handful of rare Pepe marketplaces.