Superniftyfan
In March of 1987, one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings sold for $39.9M, setting a record in the art auction world. It was an unimaginable price for a painting and one that I could never afford even in my wildest dreams, but the fact that it was grossly out of my price range did not diminish the fact that I was a huge fan of his work. I loved Van Gogh’s paintings and when I was in college, I would hang posters of his work on my dorm room walls. They weren’t the real thing of course and barely worth more than the paper they were printed on, but they were symbolic of my love for his art.
I am a fan of NFT art. As much as it has been a spectacle for its jaw dropping prices, the pinnacle of which was Beeple’s “Everydays: the First 5000 Days” that sold for $69.3M, I have been drawn to the art itself, especially the digitally native artists, some of whom worked in the special effects and gaming industries and are now using those same skills to create their own art. But there is also digital art that is purely of the form like voxel art, which I truly love and find mesmerizing.
I’m learning more and more about the NFT world and subculture everyday. I’m incredibly grateful for how warm and welcoming the community has been to me. But it’s been a long windy road to discover and hone down what kinds of NFTs I wanted to buy. I wanted to be a bit more sophisticated than the average buyer before I made my purchase. I wanted to spend time figuring out what I liked and who I liked. I wanted to bid on a piece because I felt a connection to it and not necessarily because it was popular.
But in the NFT world of today, most of the sites are for buying and selling NFTs. And there are so many of them, it’s hard to keep track of where artists are selling their work. And there really aren’t any sites just for a mere fan. There are many artists that I really love and they are sometimes way above my price range. But just like Van Gogh, the fact that I can’t afford them does not diminish my love for their work and I still want a way to show that I’m a fan. I want some way to collect their work, some way to remember them, even if it’s just jotting the name of the piece and the artist, maybe even include a photo to remember it by. It’s almost like the digital equivalent of hanging a poster on my dorm room wall, except my wall would be infinitely big. Nothing like that really exists for the mere fans.
And being a fan is how every collector starts their journey. It’s how they start their collection before a single bid has even been placed. It begins with a simple list of what they wish they could own, the artworks that inspire them from the artists they have fallen in love with. And then one day, they are compelled enough to put in a bid because they have deemed an artwork is worth that much to them. This early part of a collector’s journey is something that I’ve struggled with both from understanding the NFT market overall but also because there are almost no tools to help organize and collect NFTs that you want to buy. There are a lot of great tools to organize your NFTs once you’ve purchased them, but before that first bid is placed, it’s a lot of wandering, notepad scribbles, and open browser tabs. It was such a pain point for myself that I built a tool to help me with this exact problem. I kept adding more and more features to it and over time it grew into something I thought I should share with other collectors and more importantly with other fans.
And that is what I’m launching today.
It is a tool for the NFT art fans. It is for those who actively collect NFTs. It is for those who are just starting out and maybe can’t afford an NFT yet, but still want to collect them and hope to someday own one. It is a place to organize all the web sites where you can buy the work of an artist. It is a place you can save the pieces that captivate you and share them with others. But most importantly, it is a way to express who you are by showing people what you love.
It accomplishes all of this by building upon something we do everyday in our online lives — the simple act of bookmarking a website. It takes the concept of a bookmark and builds upon it with a focus on simplifying and optimizing that task specifically for NFTs.
You can use it to bookmark artists or collectors, individual pieces or a multi-part series. You can use it as your landing page to list all the links to your art work or personal collection. It can be used to promote artists that you think deserve more attention.
But what began as just a tool has grown into something much more. It has become something that represents all that I love about the NFT community and the values that I want to uphold and foster as the community grows and evolves. I did not plan for this to happen, but as I connected with more artists, I wanted to find ways to get them more exposure and help them succeed. So I started doing projects like “Portrait of a Collector”, “S Series” and “S Collectibles because I selfishly wanted to do collaborations with the artists that I loved. And those projects turned out to be a great way to foster even more community, with artists helping other artists not only in their craft but also cross-pollinating their fans between each other. It was wonderful to see how they all naturally started helping and encouraging each other both in private group DMs but also publicly on Twitter. So I wanted to channel all that energy into one entity, an entity that went beyond just myself and my personal influence. I wanted it to be it’s own thing, something that could exist even if I was no longer part it, something that was bigger than myself. I realized that I wanted the tool to not just be a tool, but I wanted it to be a brand. A brand that stood for something greater. A brand with principles. A brand that was about supporting artists. A brand that was about community.
And now that brand has a name. It’s not just the “S” project anymore. And it’s no longer a secret. And yes, it’s the exact same name as the tool.
It is called Superniftyfan.
With the reveal of the name, I am launching the Superniftyfan store, where you can buy t-shirts featuring all the artists who contributed works for the “S Series” and the “S Collectibles”. As I mentioned before, each person who bought a collectible will receive a special gift. That special gift is a free t-shirt from the Superniftyfan store featuring the artist of the collectible you purchased.
And these first set of t-shirts will only be available for a limited time. I want them to be like a collectible with limited quantities and to hopefully accrue social value over time. I want it to be like having a t-shirt from an epic rock concert. If you see somebody else wearing it, you’ll know they were also there at that concert and that you have found someone else that loves the same things you do.
I will be launching more collaborations with artists in the coming months and they will all have a physical item at an affordable price. These first set of artist t-shirts will be $29.99 (€29.99) but I also have a “classic” Superniftyfan t-shirt with a plain white “S” that will be only $19.99 (€19.99).
So two launches, but one name. They are two sides of the same coin, one helping collectors and the other helping artists, and hopefully together they will be able to make things a little bit better for what is probably the most amazing community that I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of.
I hope that Superniftyfan resonates with you and that you find it useful. It’s still a work in progress. It still needs Web 3 integration and lots of other features. And I’m sure I’ll need to iron out kinks and fix a lot of bugs, so please be patient as I am the only person working on this (yes, I do all the coding, design, social media, etc.).
Please follow @superniftyfan on Twitter to keep up with the project and I truly appreciate all the support you have shown for myself and my projects.
