Porsche NFT Collection Fails to Gain Traction as Mint Kicks Into Gear

German carmaker Porsche released its first non-fungible token (NFT) collection on Monday, though the project isn’t racing towards high resale prices as fans may have speculated.

The 7,500-edition collection, which pays homage to the brand’s iconic 911 sports car, opened minting for allowlist holders at 9 a.m. ET on Monday in four waves of one hour each. After the initial allowlist mint ended, the mint was released to the general public with an open-ended stop time. Collectors were allowed to mint up to three virtual 911 Porsches at 0.911 ETH each, roughly $1,490.

The next phases of the mint process allow holders to choose one of three “paths” to follow and customize the design and rarity of their NFTs.

In the hours after the mint initially opened, sales of the collection appeared to stall. At the time of writing on Monday evening, only 1,198 NFTs – about 16% of the total collection – had been sold through Porsche’s official website.

Sales on the secondary market also appeared idle. At the time of writing, the collection’s floor price was 0.89 ETH, or about $1,450 – meaning, the collection was selling for $50 cheaper on secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea while the mint was ongoing.

Porsche announced its buzzy NFT endeavor at Miami Art Week in December with much anticipation. The company partnered with German digital collectible company Fanzone’s subsidiary Road2Dreams to distribute the tokens.

Some Twitter users pushed back against the collection, noting its expensive mint price and sales strategy that appeared misaligned with the ethos of Web3.

Porsche and Road2Dreams did not immediately respond to CoinDesk for comment.

Dave Krugman, artist and founder of NFT creative agency Allships, shared his thoughts about the collection’s mint price on Twitter, calling it out touch with its target Web3 community. He told CoinDesk that larger Web2 brands entering the Web3 space must act for the long term when releasing NFTs.

“When you begin your journey in this space by extracting millions of dollars from the community, you are setting impossibly high expectations, cutting out 99% of market participants and overvaluing your assets before you have proven you can back up their valuation,” said Krugman.

“If you can start from the bottom up, you build an organic community of committed advocates with aligned incentives.”