These are motifs that one would expect from B-movie posters or caricatures: Donald Trump theatrically raises the Liberty Bell, plays the guitar on a motorcycle in the Elvis elevator and pretends to be king. But the cheesy motifs are not intended to amuse the ex-president and his big ego – they come from Trump himself.
Trading cards are most commonly associated with Pokémon in Germany and with baseball in the USA. In the political sphere they played no role until December. Then Donald Trump released a collection of digital trading cards. But although he received a lot of ridicule for the motives, from his point of view the cards were “a complete success,” Trump said last night on his network Truth Social. The reason: He had a second series of tickets on offer – and they sold out completely in a few hours.
That is quite significant. Trump offered 46,000 tickets on his own website, and another 1,000 unique tickets were set aside as a bonus for particularly generous buyers. He asked $99 for each purely digital card. The sale brought in almost $4.6 million, Donald Trump happily confirmed to Truth Social.
Even the first edition was laughed at because of the sometimes absurd motifs. The second series is in no way inferior to her. Trump appears as a soldier, as George Washington, in several Elvis poses, as a king and at a flag-bedecked barbecue. The ex-president-turned-candidate obviously values ??being seen as heroic and patriotic.
Each card can be played up to ten times. In order to be able to offer thousands of motifs despite this limitation, most of the cards are standard motifs, with only details such as a different arm position or headgear being changed. The exception is the 1000 one-time special cards, which you only get as a bonus when you buy 100 cards. An additional incentive: If you buy more than 47 tickets, you can attend a gala dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort.
The cards are intended as “collectibles for personal enjoyment only,” Trumps said. The website also emphasizes that this is not an election campaign. And warns: “They are not intended as an investment.” In fact, the cards from the first series are quite traded. Hundreds of charts are offered on the Opensea NFT platform. The sales prices vary, but all sold achieved at least double the original price. Some even fetched over $1,000.
It is not known exactly how much money Trump has made with the cards so far. It was between $100,000 and $1 million last December, according to a financial report released last week. However, since the cut-off date fell on the trading day, it is not entirely clear whether all sales in this sum have been received (here you can find out more about the content of the financial report). The first edition was 44,000 cards at the same price.
Sources: Truth Social, campaign website, Opensea
