Why 137-year-old branded bike makes Bored Ape NFT playing cards

The Bored Ape Yacht Club has attracted a number celebrity and brand owners over the past year and a half. Some use NFT artwork as a status symbol, while others tap into the IP to create and sell their own products. The last such brand to claim ownership is actually unique: a physical playing card brand established in the 1880s.

Bicycle Playing Cards, the long-running brand now under parent company Cartamundi, announced today that they have acquired a Bored Ape NFT and that they plan to create and sell physical playing cards using the artwork. The brand also aims to collaborate with other Ape owners to potentially create more NFT-themed decks.

“It’s communities like Bored Ape Yacht Club that are shaping the future of the internet and the future of Web3,” said Cartamundi Global VP of Brand Commercialization Masha Ievseieva Decrypt. “The owners who are part of the community, they are cutting edge and are the most innovative in the space.”

As with many Bored Ape-themed products, Bicycle’s upcoming playing cards are not the result of an official licensing deal with the NFT brand or its creator, Yuga Labs. Instead, holders of Ethereum NFTs become automatic given permissive rights to create derivative works of art and products and even sell them to the public.

Bored Ape keepers have used their own artwork to create things like fast food restaurants, virtual bands, alcohol and marijuana packaging, toys, clothing and more. Rappers Snoop Dogg and Eminem even used their artwork to create 3D avatars that performed their collaboration song at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.

Bike bought Boring monkey #1227 in June for just over 103 ETH, or nearly $187,000 worth at the time. Crypto payment firm Moonpay apparently facilitated the purchase, based on public blockchain data, as it has for celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Post Malone.

An NFT is a blockchain token that acts as proof of ownership for an item, including digital goods such as artwork, profile pictures, and video game items. Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most valuable and successful projects in the NFT space, generating almost 2.5 billion dollars in trading volume to date from the original collection.

Bicycle isn’t the first notable brand to buy a Bored Ape—Arizona Iced Tea bought one in 2021, but ran afoul of Yuga Labs’ licensing restrictions. Meanwhile brands like Budweiser and Visa have bought valuable NFTs from other notable projects.

Ievseieva said the bike specifically picked out a monkey with a joker playing card in a helmet, one of only 2% of the 10,000 total Ethereum NFTs to have that characteristic. It also has a futuristic-looking visor, which she said makes the character look like a “metaverse explorer,” nods to the brand’s ongoing ambitions in Web3 room.

Bicycle plans to release a physical deck next year with the Bored Ape artwork not only on the packaging, but also on the individual cards. Ievseieva said that it is planned to be released widely to the public, but that the brand may also release exclusive decks for holders.

Furthermore, Bicycle intends to engage with the community of Bored Ape holders in the coming weeks and seek potential collaborators, whose owned Apes can also be used for additional decks down the line.

This is not the bike’s first step into Web3. Late last year, the brand released its own collection of Ethereum NFTs where artists imagined how playing cards would look in the future. The NFTs also enabled holders to receive a limited edition deck of physical cards. Ievseieva described the moves as a way to bring the old brand and its fans into Web3.

“It’s actually a natural evolution of the brand, because what we want to do is bridge the gap between tradition and innovation,” she said Decrypt. “NFTs are becoming part of our everyday lives and we want to make sure we bring our community into this future.”